Improving Patient Safety: Quality Control in Nursing Report

This report focuses on quality control in nursing, specifically addressing patient safety in a skilled nursing facility. The report identifies increased falls among residents as a key patient safety issue, exploring contributing factors like lack of non-skid surfaces and low lighting. It presents evidence-based solutions such as fall risk assessments, patient education, and the use of safety equipment. The role of nurses in coordinating care is emphasized, highlighting the importance of QSEN competencies for quality improvement. Stakeholders, including nurse managers and quality improvement managers, are identified as crucial for driving safety enhancements. The report concludes that improving patient safety through quality of care is a critical public health initiative, and the strategies discussed can significantly reduce falls and improve patient outcomes. The report references several studies and guidelines to support its recommendations.

Running head: QUALITY CONTROL IN NURSING
Quality Control in Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
Issue of patient safety is one of the crucial issues in terms of the patient safety
perspective as an issue of patient safety is associated with the idea of patient satisfaction in a
hospital care setting. As discussed by Smith et al. (2018), it is stated that in a hospital care
setting, the cases of infections among the patients are very common and thus the health care
professionals must protect the patients from any types of hazards in the hospital care settings.
The chosen specific patient safety issue is the increased fall of residents at a skilled nursing
facility In this essay, the solutions for improving patient safety in hospital care settings are
discussed.
Discussion:
Factors leading to a specific patient-safety risk:
McKenzie et al. (2017), suggested that in the skilled nursing facility, common risk factors
include fear of falling, impaired walking due to gait, lack of non-skid surfaces, rubbery
footwear, low lighting in the room, and long responding time of the nurses to the mobility
impairment of the residents. More than 30% of U.S. adults 65 experience fall in the clinical
setting which leads to sudden death or permanent physical disability (Leone & Adams, 2016)
Evidence-based and best practice solution to improve patient safety:
The common evidence-based strategy to reduce residential fall includes identifying
the patients with a high risk of fall through the fall assessment of the patients. The high-risk
patients can be provided with red socks for the identifications. The bed alarms can be used
for the patients to reduce the time the patient would be away from the bed. Khanuja et al.
(2018), suggested that safety rounds by the nursing professionals twice a day can prevent
sudden fall and patient can be provided with an environment where non skidded floor along
with lights are present. The patient can be supported in conducting daily activities such as

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continence management, accessibility to the mobility aid (safe foot ware) and patient
education (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2019).
Nurse coordination:
Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) suggested various competencies for
the best possible care to the patient. QSEN suggested that for quality improvement the
nursing professionals seek information regarding the quality of care and effective use of
technology and quality measures to understand performance (Quality and Safety Education
for nursing, 2020). In order to comply with the competency of quality improvement, nurses
are required to complete and documents fall risk screening and assessment for increasing
safety of the patients. To increase the safety of the patient, nursing professionals are required
to assess the safety of the patient’s environment during the care process, report changes in the
health condition of the patients. Moreover, nurses are required to provide necessary
equipment for the fall such as non-slippery shoes, socks and other health professionals.
Nursing professionals are required to assess the quality measures that will improve safety
such as monitoring the changes and improvement of the patients in the skilled nursing
facilities (Quality and Safety Education for nursing, 2020). Moreover, for reducing cost,
similar strategies can be used such as fall assessment and screening for preventing sudden fall
and installation of equipment that can provide an idea of the risk of fall.
Stakeholders of the care:
The stakeholders that whom nurses would coordinate to drive safety enhancements
include nurse manager, quality improvement manager (King et al., 2018). The role of the
nurse managers is to supervise the care process of the nursing staff in the hospital or clinical
setting. The role of the quality improvement manager is to seek information regarding the
outcome, assess the performance of the nursing professionals. Hence, coordinating with these
two stakeholders can reduce the fall and improve patient.

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Conclusion:
On a concluding note, it can be said that improving patient safety through quality of
care is one of the crucial public health initiatives around the globe. This paper has chosen
increased fall of residents in a skilled nursing facility. The contributing factors, in this case,
can be lack of non-skid surfaces, rubbery footwear, low lighting in the room. The best
evidence-based practice can be the installation of equipment that can reduce fall, patient
education, fall risk assessment and screening and safety accompany. To coordinate the care,
nursing professionals can assess the patients and monitor the change. In this case, the
stakeholders would be quality improvement manager and nurse manager who will assess the
quality of care to improve patient safety.

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References:
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2019). Falls. U.S. Department of Healthcare
Research and Quality. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2KuOCKY
Khanuja, K., Joki, J., Bachmann, G., & Cuccurullo, S. (2018). Gait and balance in the aging
population: Fall prevention using innovation and technology. Maturitas, 110, 51-56.
King, B., Pecanac, K., Krupp, A., Liebzeit, D., & Mahoney, J. (2018). Impact of fall
prevention on nurses and care of fall risk patients. The Gerontologist, 58(2), 331-340.
Leone, R. M., & Adams, R. J. (2016). Safety standards: implementing fall prevention
interventions and sustaining lower fall rates by promoting the culture of safety on an
inpatient rehabilitation unit. Rehabilitation Nursing, 41(1), 26-32.
McKenzie, G., Lasater, K., Delander, G. E., Neal, M. B., Morgove, M., & Eckstrom, E.
(2017). Falls prevention education: Interprofessional training to enhance collaborative
practice. Gerontology & geriatrics education, 38(2), 232-243.
Quality and Safety Education for nursing (2020). QSEN Competencies [online] . Available
at: https://qsen.org/competencies/pre-licensure-ksas/ [Accessed 27 Jan. 2020].
Smith, M. L., Towne, S. D., Herrera-Venson, A., Cameron, K., Horel, S. A., Ory, M. G., ... &
Skowronski, S. (2018). Delivery of fall prevention interventions for at-risk older
adults in rural areas: findings from a national dissemination. International journal of
environmental research and public health, 15(12), 2798.

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