Why Nurses need to be Aware of the Quality Indicator

Why Nurses need to be Aware of the Quality Indicator

New nurses need to be familiar with catheter-associated urinary tract infection as a quality indicator because they play a critical role in preventing its occurrence. Insertion of urinary catheter is the primary role of nurses in hospital settings. This implies that they play a critical role in the adoption of best practices that minimize the risk of the infections. New nurses also need to be familiar with the indicator because they lead quality initiatives to improve the quality of care in their institutions. Nurses spend most of their time in hospitals with their patients. As a result, they must be involved in quality improvement initiatives since they have critical inputs on the interventions that must be adopted to improve care. Lastly, new nurses play a role in implementing evidence-based practice interventions. Consequently, they should be familiar with catheter-associated urinary tract infection for them to explore the available evidence-based data that can be implemented in their place of work to improve the quality and safety of care.

Collection and Distribution of Indicator Data

The data on catheter-associated urinary tract infections is collected using a number of approaches in the institution. One of them is the extraction of data on catheter-associated urinary tract infections from laboratory data. Laboratories in the institution post their results through the electronic health records system where the data on urinary tract infections for patients with indwelling catheter is extracted and stored in the repository for incidents in the organization. The other way in which the data is collected is through nurses and physicians entering incident reports of catheter-associated urinary tract infections into the hospital system for incidence reports and adverse events. The collected data is pooled in a system that is then used for the analysis of the data and generation of detailed reports on the infection rate. In addition, the hospital sends the data on a monthly basis to the NDQI where the data is captured for comparative analysis purposes. The organization disseminates the data on catheter-associated urinary tract infections by developing detailed reports that is shared with the healthcare providers. Monthly meetings are held to share the information on the quality indicators, success and areas of improvements in the hospital. Through it, the healthcare providers are informed about the effectiveness of the interventions that are utilized to improve the quality of care given to the patients.

Role of Nurses

Nurses play an important role in ensuring accurate reporting and high-quality results. Nurses ensure timely reporting of incidents of catheter-associated urinary tract infections. Nurses also ensure that the details about the patient-data are accurately entered into the system for reporting incidents. Nurses also guide new nurses in the accurate reporting of catheter-associated urinary tract infections. They ensure that the new nurses understand the practices that support accurate data reporting and high-quality results. Through these interventions, nurses ensure that the data that is reported depict the quality as well as safety of the care that patients with indwelling urinary catheter receive in the institution.

Conclusion

Quality indicators play an important role in nursing. Quality indicators provide data that can guide nursing research. Nurses can use information from quality indicators to implement interventions that will enhance the safety and quality of care given to patients. Catheter-urinary tract infections are one of the quality indicators in nursing. Catheter-associated urinary tract infections have adverse health effects on the patients and health organizations as a whole. New nurses should be educated about this indicator to create awareness among them on the importance of utilization of best practices to reduce its incidence rate. Health organizations should encourage accurate reporting of quality indicators to ensure that quality improvement initiatives that are embraced target at enhancing performance in prioritized areas of service provision.

References

Anggi, A., Wijaya, D. W., & Ramayani, O. R. (2019). Risk Factors for Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection and Uropathogen Bacterial Profile in the Intensive Care Unit in Hospitals in Medan, Indonesia. Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences, 7(20), 3488–3492. https://doi.org/10.3889/oamjms.2019.684

Arnold-Long, M., Emmons, K., & Chovan, J. D. (2018). Incon