Policies and Procedures in Nursing Practice

Policies and Procedures in Nursing Practice

Policies and procedures in nursing practice are important for nurses to perform and to deliver quality of care and patient safety. Policies and procedures help nurses to prevent errors and carry out procedures safely to the patients. It also brings uniformity in following organizational guidelines. Policies and procedures are designed to influence and determine major decisions and actions, and activities that take place within the boundaries set by them. Procedures are the specific methods employed to express policies in action in day to day operations. Policies and procedures are made for the users easily understandable, well organized, and easily accessible (Policies and procedures - Definition, 2012). Nowadays, most hospitals and clinics maintain their nursing policies and procedure manuals on campus intranet/public drives and also on the units. This writer as a nurse leader has access to use these resources. Evidence based policy has been defined as an approach that “helps people make well informed decisions about policies, programs and projects by putting the best available evidence from research at the heart of policy development and implementation”(Davies, 1999). This nurse leader’s facility utilizes policies that evidence based and retrieved from best available resources.

One day, this writer happened to see another nurse changing a Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter Line dressing. As a nurse leader, this writer asked the nurse why she is changing the dressing. The caregiver explained dressing changes can prevent infection to the site and there are lot of patients readmitted because of central line infections and subsequent complications. This nurse demonstrated good kn...

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...that deviates from standards of practice.

Written policies and procedures and Evidence-based practice are extremely important initiatives in nursing and this writer recommends nursing groups and educators with help of organization to create evidence based changes in nursing profession and that will extend the growth of high quality care. By delivering high quality care nurses support patient and so as the community she/he stands on.

Works Cited

Davies, P. (1999). What is Evidence-Based Education? British Journal of Educational Studies, 47(2), 108-121.

Policies and procedures - Definition. (2012). Retrieved from Business Dictionary: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/policies-and-procedures.html

Richardson, W., Sackett, D., Rosenberg, W., & Haynes, R. (1997). Evidence-based medicine: how to practice and teach EBM. London (UK): Churchill Livingstone.