The QSEN initiative is the progression of quality and safety of education for nurses that began in 2005 and has been continued over the past eight years. It is a multi-phase process that shows current and future nurses how to apply knowledge, skills, and attitudes to their everyday nursing activities(QSEN, 2013, 1). Nurses and student nurses can use their knowledge, skills and attitudes to help prevent never events such as hospital acquired conditions. Never events are medical errors that could have been serious and preventable. They could have been caused by poor communication, lack of proper nursing skills, or simply just negligence. QSEN can also be used to improve nursing outcomes for everyone involved in the healthcare field.
A common hospital acquired condition that nurses see now days is clostridium difficile. This bacterium usually invades patients who have been on long-term antibiotics that have killed off bacteria that protect them from infection. C. diff is passed from host to host by both direct and indirect contact making it readily moved from patient to patient in hospital settings (Mayo, 2013, 1). Nurses can use the QSEN competencies and KSAs to help treat and prevent hospital acquired conditions such as C.diff.
The first steps nurses can take are by using the second competency of teamwork and collaboration. This competency shows the importance for nurses to work as a functioning group with other staff members by using affective communication, respect, and shared decision making (QSEN, 2013, 2). To be an affective nurse, it is vital to apply the correct knowledge, skills, and attitudes to each situation. To prevent mass outbreaks of C.diff in your work place, nurses should work together by communicating ideas abo...
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...thers in the healthcare field and to be aware of what our outcomes of care are. I am very interested to see where the quality and safety education program will be and how many advances they have made a few years down the road from now.
Works Cited
1. Mayo Clinic staff. (2013). C. difficile. Treatments and drugs. Retrieved from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/c-difficile/DS00736/DSECTION=treatments-and-drugs.
2. QSEN institute. (2013). Pre-Licensure KSAS. Quality Improvement. Retrieved from http://qsen.org/competencies/graduate-ksas/#teamwork_collaboration
3. QSEN institute. (2013). Pre-Licensure KSAS. Evidenced-Based Practice. Retrieved from http://qsen.org/competencies/graduate-ksas/#teamwork_collaboration
4. QSEN institute (2013). Pre-Licensure KSAS. Teamwork and Collaboration. Retrieved from http://qsen.org/competencies/graduate-ksas/#teamwork_collaboration
Clostridium difficile, otherwise known as C. diff, is a species of spore-forming, anaerobic, gram-positive bacteria that is known to cause watery diarrhea. 1 The genus name, Clostridium refers to the spindle shape of the organism while Difficile means difficult in Latin due to the fact that this organism thrives in unfavorable conditions and is very difficult to isolate.4 The incidence of getting CDI has increased over the years due to new strains of increased toxin production of the bacteria and increased resistance to antibiotics.2 It is a gastrointestinal infection, and the most common cause of infectious diarrhea.1 C. difficile was first identified in the feces of healthy newborns back in the 1930’s and by 1935, it was considered normal flora. 2 During 1974, researchers conducted that about 21% of patients that were treated with an antibiotic called clindamyacin reported diarrhea and about 10% of them reported to have conducted pseudomembranous colitis as a side effect of this treatment. 2 It was in 1978 where C. diff had been known to cause anti-biotic associated diarrhea and pseudomembranous colitis. 2 It is known to form spores that resist many disinfectants; it also survives for several months on different surfaces.1 It is a common form of a nosocomial infection and the prevalence of becoming infected with C. diff is about 0-15% in a health care setting. 3 The spores survive well in environments such as soil, water and animals and is distributed worldwide. 4 CDI produces two toxins (Toxin A and B), which are cytotoxic and cause tissue necrosis.4
QSEN encourages and incorporates the patients needs as a whole which involves interdisciplinary collaboration with the patient and other interdisciplinary team members such as doctors, therapist, social workers, ect. (Hunt, 2012).
“The overall goal for the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) project is to
Nursing is a discipline in change. As the intricacy and acuity of patients expand, nurses are taking an ever-expanding role in health care management and patient outcomes. As nursing has advanced so has the curricular structure of nursing education. The current focus on nursing education needs to meet the curricular standards developed by the national accrediting agencies such as the American Accreditation Colleges of Nursing (AACN). Learning methods used in nursing education need to support the evolution of nursing skills needed for continuous safety and quality improvement in practice. QSEN reflective journaling has been shown to assist nursing students in developing these important skills. The integration of the QSEN standards in nursing
Clostridium Difficile (C. difficile) is a bacteria-related gastrointestinal infection that is caused (etiology) by the use of antibiotics therapy or exposure to the C. difficile spores (Swartz, 2013). According to published reports compiled by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), National Safety Network (NHSN), and the Center for Disease Control Prevention (CDC), the rate of CDI have a major financial impact (costs associated with medical management of CDI) on health care institution across the United States. CDI is major concern for hospital administrators and patients at Sharp Grossmont Hospital (SGH) and other in hospitals within the Sharp Healthcare Network (SHN). According to data released by CPDH and the CDC, from January to December 2012 three hospitals within the (SHN) reported 136 new cases of CDI. Statistical data also show that 20,000 to 34,000 patients were admitted or readmitted to the hospitals for recurrent complications related to CDI such as electrolyte imbalance, nutrition deficits, and systemic bacteremia (CDPH, 2013).
The Quality and Education for Nurses (QSEN) project has set several goals for future nurses to meet in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitude (KSAs), one of which is safety (2014). The definition of safety according to QSEN is minimizing risk of harm to patients through system effectiveness and individual performance (QSEN, 2014). Since falls are such a huge occurrence in health care, preventing falls is critical for patient safety. The Joint Commission (2011) has also noted fall prevention as a National Safety Patient Goal (NPSG) 09.02.01 requiring hospitals to reduce the risk of harm resulting from falls.
Laureate Education, I. (Producer). (2010). Quality improvement and safety [DVD]. In The nurse leader: New perspectives on the profession. Baltimore. MD
As a nurse we are responsible for the safety and overall health promotion of our patients. Competency in the nursing field is what ensures patient safety and decreased hospital acquired injury. Continued competence ensures that the nurse is able to perform efficiently and safely in a constantly changing environment. Nurses must continuously evaluate their level of skill and find where improvement needs to be made in order to keep up to date with the expected skill level set by their
The field of medicine is a continually evolving field. There are developments in medicine made daily that affect both medical professionals and patients. While the positive progress of medicine offers many obvious advantages, it is important that the knowledge of everyone involved with health care grows with these advancements. With the evident importance of nurses in the healthcare setting, the education of nurses is clearly significant. There are many problems in the nursing field that are associated with the inability to set standards at the entry level (Jacobs et al., 1998). The writer believes that the nursing degree should always be advanced to a bachelor’s degree, and then fostered with continuing education courses. Furthermore, the bachelor’s program should place an importance on forming a good knowledge foundation and then building clinical skills. Ultimately the writer believes a highly clinical and critical thinking bachelor’s program is the best educational preparation for an entry level nurse.
Education is imperative in improving quality and safety in patient care. Nurse educators must now implement a curriculum that is designed to teach pre and post-license nursing students the skills, knowledge, and attitude that is necessary to ensure the safety of the patients. Obtaining knowledge in how to
Nursing is a unique system that requires good collaboration with others and working together to reach the goal of providing good quality care based on evidence-based-practice. “The role of a colleague is a vital one in any profession. The status of colleague within the care generates pictures of nurses, doctors, pharmacists discussing, on an equal basis, problems and concerns related to healthcare” (Zerwekh & Zerwekh Garneau, 2015, p.144). If nurses can’t get along with other healthcare providers that will jeopardize the patient’s recovery and can take a huge turning point and guide nurses away from providing high quality
Working in the health care setting, teamwork and collaboration are used frequently to insure that everything runs correctly and efficiently. According to qsen.org, teamwork and collaboration consists of functioning effectively within nursing and inter-professional teams, fostering open communication, mutual respect, and shared decision-making to achieve quality patient care. While assessing the patient a nurse can come into contact and work with many different individuals. These can include other nurses, doctors, therapists, and family
In nursing school, nurses are taught to apply the nursing process to administer care safely and effectively. However, that value doesn’t always coincide with the employer. Instead it is about the e...
Yakob, L., Riley, T. V., Paterson, D. L., & Clements, A. (2013). Clostridium difficile exposure as an insidious source of infection in healthcare settings: an epidemiological model. BMC Infectious Diseases, 376.
The overall goal for the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) plan is to meet the challenge of educating and preparing future nurses to have the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are essential to frequently progress the quality and safety of the healthcare systems in the continuous improvement of safe practice (QSEN, 2014).Safety reduces the possibility of injury to patients and nurses. It is achieved through system efficiency and individual work performance. Organizations determine which technologies have an effective protocol with efficient practices to support quality and safety care. Guidelines are followed to reduce potential risks of harm to nurses or others. Appropriate policies