Bedside Shift Reporting Innovation Assignment
Bedside Shift Reporting
Healthcare is a sensitive area that requires periodic assessment for improvement. Healthcare institutions are increasingly developing the need to evaluate their care delivery and increase their care quality and patient outcomes. Governmental policies and regulations have also led to the demand for better healthcare services. Patients also know their rights and utilize ratings and patients’ satisfaction reports to make decisions on the healthcare facilities to attend. Thus, healthcare providers are always in a constant quest to improve healthcare services and promote patient safety. Innovations developed in healthcare can change routine practices or amend policies to produce desired outcomes. Organizations must assess innovations for issues such as compatibility with the healthcare organization, testability, and resources required versus the expected result. This essay analyzes a healthcare innovation, bedside shift reporting, and its preparation, implementation, and evaluation. Bedside Shift Reporting Innovation Assignment
Innovation Proposal
Proposed Innovation
The selected innovation is bedside shift reporting, also patient shift handing over reports to promote patient safety. The innovation will transition handing over practices from handing over reports at the nurses’ desk to handing over at the patient’s bedside using current technologies, with the significant practice change being patient involvement in the reporting. The innovation will increase the accuracy of information flow and thus promote better care quality and patient safety.
Roles of an Innovative Nurse Leader
Nurse innovators are vital professionals in healthcare institutions and quality improvement. Nurses learn many aspects of care, such as leadership, care coordination, collaboration, and healthcare improvement. Lemberger (2022) notes that nurse innovators play other roles, such as leading others, research and care improvement, and data management. These professionals have knowledge, skills, and experiences that allow them to work in the relevant county, state, and federal positions. All nurses are innovators, and the nurse innovator role is the official nurse position responsible for healthcare improvement, especially in nursing-related work. Nurse innovators focus on healthcare improvement, care quality, and patient safety. These professionals are also involved in organizational activities that generate profit for the organization.
One primary role of innovative nurse leaders/ nurse innovators is assessing healthcare data to determine problems affecting patient and care worker populations (Brady & Byrne, 2022). They then develop and implement evidence-based best practices to solve the problems unearthed. Nurse innovators also monitor current innovations and provide reports on their performance. These professionals focus on quality improvement in a healthcare institution and are thus involved in policy development (Azar, 2021). Innovations are implemented and supported by policies, and nurse innovators participate in the policy development processes to improve care quality and patient safety. They also act as consultants for ongoing projects and any other project not related to quality improvement. Their knowledge and skills are crucial to care quality and patient safety in organizations.
Organizational Characteristics
The organization is a state hospital that provides a wide range of services to a catchment population of about 30,000. It’s a referral center for many private and public health centers in the county and offers outpatient and inpatient services. The hospital also has all special clinics, including oncology, diabetes, counseling, health fitness, rehabilitation, and health promotion. Most often, patients with social needs such as mental health are isolated in healthcare because fewer facilities offer these services. The facility also oversees community outreach programs such as school education, vaccination campaigns, and community education. The hospital values the role of the community in healthcare and thus organizes community outreach programs with stakeholders for better patient outcomes. They educate families and schools on health issues such as the COVID-19 virus and obesity and ways of preventing it. They also educate mothers to vaccinate their children amidst the resistance against vaccines despite their importance. These activities lead to healthier communities. Bedside Shift Reporting Innovation Assignment
Population Demographics
The hospital serves individuals with all healthcare conditions requiring inpatient or outpatient treatment services. They serve all genders equally. The hospital also serves patients with special clinic needs, such as ongoing cancer treatment and renal dialysis without admission, and those with minor issues, such as headaches, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, and do not necessarily require hospital admission. There are no age limits for this innovation, and the involved population varies from one-day-old babies in newborn intensive care units to pregnant mothers. Other patients include surgical patients, patients with various illnesses such as diabetes, stroke, and end-stage renal disease, to older adults in hospice care. The population also includes individuals with emergency conditions such as hypoglycemia, torrential hemorrhage, and syncope who require short-term treatment without necessarily being admitted into the wards. The hospital serves populations from all races and ethnic groups, including African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, whites, and interracial, without discrimination. The population of interest for this innovation excludes patients requiring outpatient services. It includes patients of all ages and gender requiring hospital admission, prolonged or short-term admission such as in the emergency department.
Team Member Roles
The innovation team will entail various professionals, including researchers, nurses, quality improvement professionals, pharmacists, doctors, nutritionists, and healthcare leaders. They will perform various roles, such as assessing healthcare data, determining the required resources, and implementing the innovation. In addition, they will make vital decisions such as those involving finance allocation. They will also participate in monitoring and evaluation of the innovation and how it affects other areas of the healthcare organization. Informal roles include handling disciplinary cases arising from professionals in the team. The members will also participate in change management at the personal level by influencing professionals in social groups to accept and implement the innovation.
Team members Shared Values
The shared team values relate to the organizational values and culture: integrity, responsibility, team-playing, and creative thinking (innovation). Creative thinking is a value required of all team members. The members encounter professional, environmental, and patient problems that they must solve using creative ideas. The members also require integrity because they handle important healthcare data and sensitive leadership details. Integrity helps them remain reliable and valuable and ensures cohesion in the group. The success or failure of the team depends on integrity and loyalty to the team. Team-playing skills are the most important for the team members. They make decisions collaboratively and perform most of their roles as a team. Every team member understands their role and is responsible for their assigned patients. Responsibility ensures fewer discipline issues because each professional performs their roles efficiently and without being pushed. Bedside Shift Reporting Innovation Assignment
Discussion of Internal and External Factors
Various factors lead to the development of this innovation. The World Health Organization states that adverse events due to unsafe care is among the ten leading causes of death. In developed countries, 10% of the patients are harmed to varying degrees when receiving care, and more than 50% of the adverse events are preventable (WHO, 2019). The most common causes of these adverse events are wrong diagnosis, prescription, and consumption of medications. The most apparent cause of these three problems is poor communication between the patient and healthcare providers and among healthcare providers. According to WHO (2019), medication errors and health-associated infections are the primary cause of harm. The agency for healthcare research and the center for disease control and prevention, and many studies recommend the implementation of BSR as the standing handing over the practice in healthcare organizations (AHRQ, n.d.). Research revealed marked support for the practice in various studies. Studies cite BSR as a practice that increases patient safety by reducing medical errors and patient falls and engaging patients and their families in the patient’s care (McAllen et al., 2018).
The healthcare organization reported 75 medication errors and three adverse events in the recent quarter. Fifty-eight of the medication errors and two adverse events were directly related to poor communication between nurses leading to patient identification-related errors and LASA drug errors. There were 35 minor falls, with two fatal falls leading to the death of an elderly patient and a hip fracture of another elderly patient. Errors that remain unreported are also alarmingly high due to fear of staff reporting their colleagues due to the stern disciplinary measures related to these errors. Most healthcare providers do their best to ensure these errors are unreported. These internal factors led to the development of an innovation that would improve communication and patient safety.
Alignment to Strategic Initiatives
Various governmental, organizational, and regulatory initiatives regulate patient safety. The organization has a safety policy requiring the patients’ involvement in their care through education. In addition, these policies emphasize extensive patient education to enhance autonomy and increase satisfaction. Bedside shift reports (BSR) engage patients to enhance their knowledge regarding their health and healthcare interventions, aligning with organizational policies. The organization also targets to improve patients and reduce the prevalence of medical errors in the organization. BSR is one strategy that aims to increase patient engagement in care interventions and reduce medical errors.
The National Institute of Health Clinical and Safety Performance metrics emphasize preventing fall risks and pressure injuries and reducing medication errors. The goal is to ensure zero pressure injuries, reduce fall risks to below 0.3 per 1000 patients, and reduce pressure injuries (NIH, 2022). The national health disparities and quality report by the agency for healthcare research and quality requires healthcare institutions to reduce medication errors associated with poor communication, a preventable risk. The AHRQ also recommends the implementation of bedside shift reports in handing over patients to reduce errors associated with poor communication practices in patient handing over (AHRQ, n.d.). The body recognizes innovation as a change in nursing practice that promotes patient safety and involvement in their care. Bedside shift reports also help correctly identify unconscious patients or comorbidities that make it difficult for them to confirm their identities (AHRQ, n.d.). The agency recommends that organizations implement bedside shift reports developing a checklist to assist in carrying out the role. The AHRQ (n.d.) notes that bedside shift reporting also leads to tangible quality and safety metrics improvements in patient care. These strategies are developed by governmental bodies responsible for quality improvement and ensuring patient safety hence their credibility, relevance, and significance. Thus, the proposed innovation aligns with governmental, organizational, and regulatory bodies’ initiatives and recommendations on promoting quality care delivery and patient safety. Bedside Shift Reporting Innovation Assignment
Purpose Statement
The innovation aims to develop a formidable patient shift handing-over system that will increase patient safety and promote better patient outcomes. The organization will evaluate the innovation based on the purpose statement.
Innovation Goal
The goal is to shift the handover report from the nursing desk to bedside nursing hanging over while utilizing healthcare technologies to reduce medical errors, adverse effects, and near misses associated with poor handing over practices and increase patient safety in six months. Handing over to the patients will entail a change of many items, including tools used and terms. At the bedside, the nurses use terms such as “you” when referring to the patient to ensure the patient understands their health status from the reports. Patients can participate fully in care and can avoid medical errors that arise from negligence or lack of information by the patients. In the past decade, sentinel events related to poor handing over practices have been reported hence the need for formidable systems. Nurses and patients should understand their care status for maximum care delivery. The innovation will be assessed after six months, and the evaluation will be based on the ability to reduce medical errors. The decision on innovation continuity will be based on the ability to meet the purpose and achieve the strategic goal. Bedside Shift Reporting Innovation Assignment
