Improving Quality and Safety in Healthcare: A Clinical Care Activity

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1NURSING
Introduction
Satisfaction of the service users helps in the determination of quality. Customers or
the service users can be both internal (employees and management) and external (community
level service users and the suppliers) to an organisation. Quality is quality of kind or can be
defined as a service that exceeds the level of consumer's satisfaction. In other words, quality
can be defined as an ongoing process (Radawski, 1991). Under the context of the healthcare
organisation, the level of quality is access on the parameter of the improved patient outcome.
The improvement in the patients' outcome is monitored based on the comprehensive
improvement of mental and physical well-being along with increase in the level of patients;
satisfaction, decreased cost of care and length of stay at the hospital. At community level the
quality is also judged on the parameter of increase in the patients' knowledge and awareness
about the disease along with the development of the self-management skills.
The following essay aims to highlight one clinical care activity that can be used to
improve the quality and safety of the patients under the healthcare setting. In doing this, the
essay will initiate with a critical discussion of quality and safety in healthcare system with a
general perspective. This will be followed by selection on appropriate clinical activity in
order to promote one of the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards (NSQHSS)
highlighted by Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQH). The
essay will choose standard 3 of NSQHSS in designing the clinical activity. At the end, the
essay will highlight the process assessing the outcome of the clinical care activity. Overall
the essay will highlight how clinical care activity helps to improve patients’ safety and care
standards.

2NURSING
Critical discussion of quality and safety standards under the Australian Healthcare
system
According to the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards (NSQHSS) by
the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQH) (2012), the
improvement in the quality of the healthcare system deals with reduction of the public harm.
This can be done by providing proper quality assurance mechanisms that tests whether
relevant services are in place in order to ensure minimal level of standards of safety. The
assessment of the minimum level of standards in the healthcare system is governed by 10
different parameters (ACSQH, 2012).

3NURSING
Figure: 10 different standards for maintaining quality healthcare service
(Source: ACSQH, 2012)
However, much before the standards were published by ACSQH in 2012, the editorial
data published by Donabedian (1988) helped in the identification of the parameters on which
the quality standards of healthcare can be determined. According to Donabedian (1988) the
quality standards of healthcare mainly depends in the knowledge, judgement, interpersonal
communication skills and amenities given by the healthcare practitioners. In context of this,
Kutzleb et al. (2015) stated that at present the quality of the healthcare delivery of an
organization is primarily aligned towards the role of the healthcare professionals. The
identification of the early signs and symptoms of disease by the healthcare professionals,
setting of the clinical priority and implementation of the person centred care plan helps to
improve the overall quality of care. Jarrar, Minai, Al‐Bsheish, Meri and Jaber (2018) stated
that person-centred care plan must be followed by safe implementation. In some cases it is
reported that increase in the workload of the nursing professionals, lack of proper availability
of resources or lack of skills of the healthcare practitioners lead to the generation of practice
error or medication error. Such errors are detrimental in healthcare practice as it endangers
the life of the patients. Vrbnjak, Denieffe, O’Gorman and Pajnkihar (2016) recommended
that in order outnumber the manual error; the healthcare organisation must come forward
with trained nursing workforce who is well-equipped to handle the pressure and at the same
time has proper skills to execute the comprehensive implantation of the care plan. Apart from
the clinical approach, the healthcare professionals must also take into consideration of the
mental health of the patients in order to improve the overall quality of care. Blease, Lilienfeld
and Kelley (2016) stated that taking informed consent, indulging into therapeutic
relationships with the patient by the use of effective communication skills enable a patient to
feel empowered. This sense of empowerment helps to improve their mental health and at the