Comment 2 NUR

Advanced Practice Nurses should be able to gauge the quality of their services in order to deliver services that are safe and useful to the patients. The measurement begins with the selection of the obvious indicators that are suitable to the nurse role and patient needs that are typical in general. Kilpatrick et al. (2023) searched through numerous indicators of patient-level, provider-level, and health system-level and demonstrated that indicators may comprise of function, clinical condition, diagnosis, patient education, and use of services which assists teams demonstrate what the advanced practice nurses change in care. The visibility of nursing work provided by selected indicators and a straightforward method of assessing whether changes help to improve care would make a difference. In the absence of indicators teams are not able to determine whether care is improved following a change.

A model that is simple, by connecting inputs, processes and outputs, can be used to monitor quality. Gormley et al. (2024) explain that structure, process, and outcome measures allow the teams to see how staffing and resources influence daily care steps and final results, and this perspective is used to facilitate measurement planning. Practical tools such as electronic health record reports, dashboards, chart audit of teams, and frequent review meetings will be included. Direct outcome data is added with the help of patient surveys and basic clinical tests. Education of the people that collect the data and short checklists would also assist in maintaining the data right and viable.

The scorecard used by Advanced Practice Nurses should incorporate the role-specific outcome measures and safety measures. Examples provided by Kleinpell et al. (2024) include falls, pressure ulcer rates, readmission, patient satisfaction and role-specific items such as follow-up rates to heart failure clinics, asthma-related emergency visits and time to key tests. The integration of safety metrics, process steps, and patient-reported outcome measures provides a more comprehensive picture of quality care than measuring a single item. Result comparison with other related services would make teams understand whether performance is satisfactory or it requires improvement.

The best way to implement these ideas is to begin with three to five measures that are applicable to the care setting and patients. Establish baseline record data on short regular intervals and draw basic charts to enable the team to visualise trends. The results should be discussed in short-term meetings with simple plan-do-study act cycles to test one small change at a time. Share discoveries with leaders and patients in order to develop trust and support. Simplify measurement, repeatable, and associated with daily nursing behaviour such that the work results in improved care in the long term. The teams are to report straightforward results to managers and make decisions based on data to ensure the training requirements and resource variations. Definite description of all measures and a data custodian assist in rendering the work just and credible. Numbers are contextualised with patient stories and short case reviews that help the staff to see why trends occur. Having the team prepared will add additional steps and create a mini-dashboard to direct people and tool requests. Examine and revise actions a couple of times annually with employees.

References

Kilpatrick, K., Tchouaket, E., Savard, I., Chouinard, M. C., Bouabdillah, N., Provost-Bazinet, B., Costanzo, G., Houle, J., St-Louis, G., Jabbour, M., & Atallah, R. (2023). Identifying indicators sensitive to primary healthcare nurse practitioner practice: A review of systematic reviews. PLOS ONE, 18(9), e0290977.

Gormley, E., Connolly, M., & Ryder, M. (2024). The development of nursing-sensitive indicators: A critical discussion. International Journal of Nursing Studies Advances, 7, 100227.

Kleinpell, R., Kapu, A., & Borum, C. (2024). Measures of success: Making the case for advanced practice sensitive quality indicators. HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine, 5(5), 605614.

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