Balancing Care between Highly Demanding Patient and Highly Acute Patient

Balancing Care between Highly Demanding Patient and Highly Acute Patient

providers to balance care between highly demanding and acute patients in the effort of providing patient-centered care.

Supportive Organization: the selected organizations in this study is the Institute for Healthcare Improvement since it has goals and objectives that focus on eradicating the problem of balancing care between highly demanding and acute care patients as one of the critical challenges facing the healthcare in the United States.

Second Solution: the most effective second solution is the use of the evidence-based practice in nursing as it will be discussed in the essay. Balancing Care between Highly Demanding Patient and Highly Acute Patient.

Implementation and Evaluation: The Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) strategy has been identified as the most effective method in implementing and evaluating this second solution.

Overall Project Evaluation: the clinical practice project has been very instrumental in enhancing my professional practice as a nurse.

Preceptor Experience: the instructor has been very pivotal in facilitating the success of this project and ensuring that my experience while undertaking this project has sufficiently exposed me to the nature of challenges encountered by nursing practitioners..

Introduction

Changes in healthcare needs and the emergence of new and deadly diseases have resulted in the dramatic increase in demand for the provision of patient-centered care. This essay sets to critically discuss the issue of patient care by examining how difficult it is for the nurses to maintain a healthy balance of care that is provided to the highly demanding patient and highly acute patient as one of the problems facing the healthcare system in the United States. It will also evaluate how the Institute of Healthcare Improvement helps in eradicating this problem, suggest a second solution that can be used in case the actual proposed solution fails, implement a plan that will be used to evaluate the second solution and lastly provide an overall evaluation of the clinical practice project.

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Discussion of the Problem Involved

The last two centuries have seen a rapid change in the healthcare system within the United States which can be marked by the significant shifts in care delivery from the use of the indemnity plan to a managed care system (Mason et al., 2016). Both economic and political factors have been identified as the primary drivers of these changes in the delivery of health care (Levesque, Harris & Russell, 2013). Balancing Care between Highly Demanding Patient and Highly Acute Patient. Moreover, a healthy and sizeable workforce is required to meet the current high demands in healthcare, especially following the enactment of recent policies such as the Affordable Care Act (Arnold, 2013). Lack of enough educational training especially to the nurses has made it increasingly impossible for most of the health care organizations to effectively balance care between highly demanding patient and highly acute patient (Levine & Mulligan, 2015).

The inability of nurses and healthcare organizations to balance between these two types of care has resulted to limited access to care providers, increase in the amount of waiting times, decrease in satisfaction of the patients on the quality of care services extended to them and shortened time with caregivers (Andersen, Rice & Kominski, 2011). These shortcomings are likely to reduce the health status of the Americans by 20% nationally in the next two decades if no effective measures are put into place to eradicate them and ensure that nurses and other care providers are able to strike a sufficient balance when delivering care to both highly demanding patients and highly acute patients (Thompson et al., 2014). Balancing Care between Highly Demanding Patient and Highly Acute Patient.

Analysis of the Supportive Organization

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is one of the leading non-profit making organizations involved in promoting the health of the current population in the United States and remains committed to advancing the quality of care through creating a workforce that can facilitate the delivery of care to patients (Al-Tawfiq & Abed, 2010). Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is actively involved in supporting the quality of care delivered to the patients and ensuring that the nurses and other healthcare professionals can effectively balance quality care delivery between highly demanding patients and highly acute patients (Al-Tawfiq & Abed, 2010).  Balancing Care between Highly Demanding Patient and Highly Acute Patient.It does this through actively been involved in scientific research and gathering of substantial evidence that can be used to support the work of the nurses and ensuring that patient-centered and cost-friendly care is extended to all the patients seeking health care services (Padrnos et al., 2011). The below figure illustrates some of the critical areas that the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) focuses on in the attempt of addressing this healthcare challenge.

Figure 1: Target Areas Focused on by IHI

 

Source: (Padrnos et al., 2011).

Discussion of the Second Solution

Another strategy that can be employed in eradicating this health care problem is the evidence-based practice in nursing (EBP). This approach is one of the most effective ways of promoting the delivery of high-quality care for both the highly demanding patients and highly acute patients equally and ensuring that all the healthcare needs and demands of these patients are sufficiently addressed (Stevens, 2013). Evidence-based practice helps in ensuring that adequate resources needed to facilitate high-quality care are put into place and appropriately allocated across the entire health care system in the country (Melnyk et al., 2012). Balancing Care between Highly Demanding Patient and Highly Acute Patient.

This strategy is the most effective alternative approach that should be employed as a back-up plan in case the first solution fails to meet the desired health care needs. Evidence-based practice in nursing has proven to be one of the most effective ways of enhancing clinical expertise. It facilitates the use of reliable nursing and medical evidence that can be used to support quality and safety education for nurses thus enabling them to manage to balance the delivery of high-quality care between the highly demanding patient and highly acute patient (Melnyk et al., 2012).

Implementation and Evaluation of the Second Solution

Numerous research is needed to accurately collect and analyze the essential data necessary to establish a plan that can be used to implement the evidence-based practice in nursing. The Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) is one of the most useful frameworks that provide the guidelines on how the evidence-based practice in nursing can be implemented and evaluated (Coury et al., 2017). According to the Plan Do Study Act (PDSA), a plan for all the necessary actions and resources required to make evidence-based practice strategy operational, including what problem needs to be solved or improved will be established. The next step during the implementation process is going to be the actual execution of the evidence-based practice among nurses in the healthcare settings across the country and recording the short-term achievements or outcomes (Coury et al., 2017).

The third stage during the implementation and evaluation of this challenge will be closely monitoring the progress made following the implementation of the evidence-based practice in nursing in the attempt of ensuring that the expected goals and objectives are achieved which in this cases in ensuring that nurses and healthcare providers are able to effectively balance care extended to both highly demanding and acute patients (Donnelly & Kirk, 2015).Balancing Care between Highly Demanding Patient and Highly Acute Patient.  It is through monitoring and evaluation of the evidence-based practice as the back-up solution that all the present flaws and weaknesses can be identified on time and help in facilitating the provision of high-quality care to the highly demanding and highly acute patients (Donnelly & Kirk, 2015). The last step will be undertaking all the necessary actions needed to eradicate the various weaknesses that have been identified while implementing this strategy hence ensuring the desired goals and expectations are achieved (Donnelly & Kirk, 2015). The below figure illustrates the framework of the Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) strategy.

Figure 2: Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) Framework

Source: (Leis & Shojania, 2017).

The above framework is used by most of the non-profit making organizations such as the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) while promoting the delivery of quality health care as it helps them make an in-depth analysis of the various possible outcomes of the change being implemented in the organization.

Overall Clinical Practice Project Evaluation

The actual project involved designing and implementing a patient-centered plan that was aimed at assisting the existing nurses in prioritizing their care delivery services when dealing with highly demanding and acute care patients. The first solution that was suggested as the best way to deal with this challenge was the development of a treatment prioritization schedule that would be used in giving the patients in worse conditions the priority during provision of care services (Golgoun & Seprdnan, 2018). One of the challenges or barriers that I experienced when undertaking the actual project is determining the most reliable evidence that indicates which kind of patients that nurses should give the priority while providing health care services given the fact that both patients require specialized care. Balancing Care between Highly Demanding Patient and Highly Acute Patient.

I learned a lot of things while undertaking the initial project which gave me an actual and direct experience to the kind of challenges experienced by the nurses while taking their duties and trying to provide high quality and patient-centered care. Such teachings have been very pivotal in enhancing my professional practices as a nurse as I have learned on some of the best ways to deal with the patients depending on their health care needs and the urgency of such care needs (Melnyk et al., 2012). I will certainly put into practice the various lessons learned from this experience in my profession as one of the key change agents in the health care sector

Preceptor Experience

Moreover, I have highly benefited from the numerous guidelines and teachings that have been extended to me by my allocated preceptor or instructor while undertaking this clinical practice project. Under my instructor’s supervision, I have managed to acquire substantial knowledge on how to effectively deal with patients who have diverse health care needs and learned how to prioritize my care services to the patients depending on their current care needs and medical conditions.

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Conclusion

Conclusively, one of the main challenges facing the nursing practice and the healthcare system, in general, is the ability to balance care between highly demanding and acute patients and determine which patients should be given the priority depending on the medical needs.  Balancing Care between Highly Demanding Patient and Highly Acute Patient.The Institute for Healthcare Improvement is one of the most active non-profit making organizations that have over the years been actively involved in promoting care delivery, including the provision of patient-centered care. Moreover, in case the use of a treatment prioritization schedule fails to be effective in eradicating the healthcare problem being discussed in this paper, the use of the evidence-based practice in nursing is considered as the second most effective strategies that can be employed. The paper has also discussed the importance of using the Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) strategy while implementing and evaluating this second solution.

Balancing Care between Highly Demanding Patient and Highly Acute Patient