November 28, 2011
“Ensuring that nurses can practise according to the philosophical underpinnings of their profession is recognized as an important factor in job satisfaction and is therefore a key element of retention and recruitment of the nursing workforce. Creating a culture of excellence requires making explicit a set of values and performance expectations to which all nurses can subscribe and that influences practice behaviours. The vice president and chief nursing officer of a large health region in Western Canada therefore sought to establish a foundation for building such a culture of excellence, through the creation of a mission, vision and Professional Practice Framework for the region’s nurses. The author describes the development of the nursing Professional Practice Framework for this health region, presents the results of a participatory approach to promoting nurses’ ownership of the model and discusses plans for assessing the impact of the framework on nurses’ practice and patient care.”
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Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Health human resources, Nurses, Nursing | No Comments
August 26, 2011
Key implications for decision-makers:
- A new model of nursing care practice that emphasizes continuity of care for patients as well as the provision of clinical experts for nursing staff was developed by a multidisciplinary staff team at The Ottawa Hospital. The introduction of the model was extensively evaluated at the three largest campuses over a three-year period using a mixture of approaches and methods, including quality of care surveys from 1,672 patients as well as ratings of work and heath indicators from 731 nurses.
- It is important to monitor the process of implementation as well as the main evaluation outcomes and to ensure that staff members have a strong buy-in for the changes being introduced in order to encourage active and ongoing participation throughout the process. Work reorganizations on this scale can take several years to complete and require extensive effort to maintain momentum and involvement.
Patient ratings (from multi-item surveys) of nursing quality of care are consistently very high and thus are not very sensitive to detecting changes created by the introduction of a new model of nursing care. Patients from all three hospital sites consistently rated the overall quality of their nursing care as excellent or very good about 90% of the time. There were no significant changes noted over time in either the combined patient rating summary scales or the scores for the scale’s individual questions designed to address several specific components of nursing care.
- Nursing staff survey data indicate that the intervention had a number of positive outcomes on the quality of nurse work life, well-being and their perceptions of the organizational climate although the improvements seen one year after the introduction of the new model were often tempered over time, suggesting the need for ongoing monitoring and adjustments of quality of work-life indicators.
- Major organizational change, such as introducing a new model of clinical nursing practice, can be done without negatively affecting work stress or nurse well-being. Markers of nurse health and well-being were not strongly affected by the introduction of the new model. Nurse burnout and family-work conflict were slightly improved one year after the new model was introduced while nurse ratings of their overall physical health showed a slight drop over time. No differences were seen over time for nurse ratings of their pain (back and neck/shoulder) or mental health.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Health human resources, Nurses, Nursing | No Comments
July 7, 2011
This publication from the Canadian Nurse Association “describe the integrated knowledge, skills, judgment and attributes that guide nurse practitioner practice. Safe, competent, ethical nurse practitioner practice requires the integration and performance of many competencies simultaneously. This document may be used by nurse practitioners to support their self-reflection, self-evaluation and continuing competence, as well as to educate others about their role. Nurse practitioner educators may use it for curriculum development. And it is a useful resource for helping others – including government agencies, employers, health providers and the public – to understand what they can expect of nurse practitioners.”
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Nurses, Nursing | No Comments
May 23, 2011
Healthcare organizations are constantly facing a number of crisis from doctor shortages to preventable misdiagnosis to rising costs of healthcare delivery. Nurses, one of a healthcare organization’s most valuable resources, have the capability to help organizations deal with these issues. In order for nurses to be effectively utilized within an organization, managers must focus on the following six areas for optimal performance:
- “focus on transformational leadership at all levels;
- redesign care to optimize nurses’ professional expertise and knowledge;
- all hospital personnel should work together to ensure safe and reliable care for patients in acute settings;
- systems and a culture should be built that encourage, support and spread vitality and teamwork in all areas of nursing;
- put in place structures and processes that ensure patient-centered care;
- and, a national learning system is needed to make all models and prototypes accessible to nurses at all levels.”
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Health human resources, Nurses, Nursing | No Comments
April 29, 2011
“Regulated Nurses: Canadian Trends, 2005 to 2009 draws on data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information’s Nursing Database, which covers the three regulated nursing professions in Canada: registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical nurses (LPNs) and registered psychiatric nurses (RPNs). This report presents five-year workforce trends across Canada, across regulated nursing professions and across a variety of demographic, education, mobility and employment characteristics, in order to inform health human resource planning in Canada.”
The report covers the following broad areas of Canadian nursing:
- Regulated Nursing Workforce Continues to Grow;
- Regulated Nursing Workforce Across Age Groups;
- Mobility Trends of Regulated Nursing Graduates;
- Registered Nurses;
- Licensed Practical Nurses;
- Registered Psychiatric Nurses.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Canada, Nurses, Nursing, Trends | No Comments
April 20, 2011
ABSTRACT: Patient satisfaction is receiving greater attention as a result of the rise in pay- for-performance (P4P) and the public release of data from the Hospital Consumer Assess- ment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. This paper examines the rela- tionship between nursing and patient satisfaction across 430 hospitals. The nurse work en- vironment was significantly related to all HCAHPS patient satisfaction measures. Additionally, patient-to-nurse workloads were significantly associated with patients’ ratings and recommendation of the hospital to others, and with their satisfaction with the receipt of discharge information. Improving nurses’ work environments, including nurse staffing, may improve the patient experience and quality of care.
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Nurses, Nursing, Patient satisfaction, Patient-centered care, Quality of care | 1 Comment
February 17, 2011
This weekly column presents recommendations for streamlining processes in order to improve productivity in a hospital setting. It focuses specifically on employing lean processes in the deliverance of quality healthcare services:
“One way to improve hospital productivity and labor practices in hospitals is to assess your facility’s nursing unit report process. Three factors than can impact the report productivity process include:
- Streamlined approach;
- Continuity of patient care;
- Effective nurse to nurse communication.”
Posted in Mass Media Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Economics, Efficiency, Hospital administration, Nurses, Nursing | No Comments
February 8, 2011
ABSTRACT: Patient satisfaction is receiving greater attention as a result of the rise in pay- for-performance (P4P) and the public release of data from the Hospital Consumer Assesment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. This paper examines the relationship between nursing and patient satisfaction across 430 hospitals. The nurse work environment was significantly related to all HCAHPS patient satisfaction measures. Additionally, patient-to-nurse workloads were significantly associated with patients’ ratings and recommendation of the hospital to others, and with their satisfaction with the receipt of discharge information. Improving nurses’ work environments, including nurse staffing, may improve the patient experience and quality of care.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Evidence-based, Health human resources, Hospital administration, Indicators, Nurses, Nursing, Patient satisfaction, Patient-centered care | No Comments
January 6, 2011
This article reviews the role of registered nurses as primary care providers and advocates changing existing restrictive laws in order to grant primary care responsibilities to qualified nurses. It presents the physician argument against nurses having a greater role in primary health management and the IOM (Institute of Medicine) and RN argument for the opening of legislation to allow for more hands on action from nurses. The thrust of the physician point of view is that nurses, even those with a PhD, lack the years of education and training that doctors must undergo in order to work with the public as a healthcare practitioner. The IOM and RN opinion is that restricting nurses role increases barriers to timely and affordable healthcare, and as such these barriers must be brought down across the United States in order to provide greater benefit to the public.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Access to care, Decision making, Health care reform, Nurses, Patient-centered care, Policy | No Comments
December 13, 2010
Despite a five per cent increase in the population over the past five years, CNA was pleased to note that Canada was tackling its nursing shortage – an important step to ensuring Canadians receive the care where and when they need it.
Posted in Mass Media Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Nurses, Nursing | No Comments
