How the Role of the APN might change without Effective Quality Measures

The APRNs have various responsibilities and they perform different clinical duties. For example, they facilitate EBP, employ strategies that optimize clinical outcomes, and they ensure constant quality improvement. They equally work with patients who require acute care, and those who are in need of critical care, and they perform other duties such as implementation of initiatives which prevent patient suffering.

When an organization wants to establish policy guidelines which address quality, it may seek the views of the APRNs, and through their roles and duties, they can contribute to lowering the rates of re-hospitalization, prevent the deterioration of the patient’s health, and improve the overall wellbeing of those they are caring for (Eckardt et al., 2017). Thus, the APRNs play vital role in the healthcare setup.

While the APN’s role is core to the advancement of the clinical objectives, APN’s capacity to fully improve the patient’s experience of care depends on the availability of the effective quality measures. The lack of these kind of measures can hamper APN’s capacity to contribute to quality improvement. One of the key issues which may stem from the lack of the quality measures is the lack of guidelines to direct APN’s decisions.

When an APN does not have resources or the guidelines to implement change, this can have negative impact in terms of what they can accomplish. When an organization has quality measures in place, it allocates resources and materials to help with the execution of such measures (Sutton et al., 2020). The Lack of such measures means APN cannot get the resources or materials they need to improve quality.

Recommendations and Suggestions

The quality of the environment in which nurses operate can influence the costs and quality of care, and affect access to care. The hospital, in a bid to establish this kind of environment, should set goals on what it wants to achieve, and communicate these goals to the staff. Doing this will help everyone including APNs to understand organizational expectations, and work towards meeting these expectations. The hospital should constantly review quality measures and assess whether employees are complying with the existing guidelines. This should be accompanied by undertaking measures to seal the quality loopholes.

Conclusion

Providers should prioritize the delivery of quality care. Quality in this case means the care that is safe, and which is administered in a manner that it achieves expected results, and is consistent with standards which guide the delivery of clinical services. The APRNs can adopt various strategies in order to provide patients with safe care, and within the required time.

However, the environment in which an advanced nurse works determines the nurse’s capacity to provide safe care. A conducive environment for the nurse is one in which quality measures are established, and resources are available to nurses. These measures can shape the APNs’ role development by shaping how they practice, and engage patients. They can equally lead fewer deaths, improve safety of care, and reduce the re-hospitalization rates.

References

Bhatt, J., & Bathija, P. (2018). Ensuring Access to Quality Health Care in Vulnerable Communities. Academic medicine: journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 93(9), 1271–1275.Doi: https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000002254.