Quality Factors
Quality factors in healthcare departments are associated with various changes, including how nurse practitioners and other healthcare providers communicate and collaborate. Technological changes have enhanced healthcare quality and safety among patients. Quality factors, in many ways, have impacted how healthcare providers collaborate and apply different communication aspects. Additionally, quality factors have helped to increase efficiency and provision of patient-centered care within healthcare systems. This article discusses several factors such as technical communication and collaboration, shared decision making, and laws, regulation, and policies that influence healthcare quality and safety within the health systems.
Technology
Technology has played a massive role in changing and improving the level of quality and safety care within health care facilities. For instance, before the emergence of technology, nurses recorded healthcare data on hardcopy documents and maintained in a chart within the facility the patient was attending. The process was tiresome since when the patient’s information was required, nurses had to make copies of the documents and sent them. However, technology has improved how nurses acquire and share patient information. For instance, nurses and other healthcare providers can now store patients’ information electronically (Mettler, 2016). Records stored in electronic form are known as Electronic Health Records, and they involve data for healthcare systems.
Moreover, through technology, nurses are able to transfer information from one department to another through various channels such as fax. Sending information through these channels has helped to avoid duplicate orders and tests. Moreover, technology has helped nurses to update information on recent visits and procedures. Technology has also helped improve medication order, which has changed from manual documents to electronic documents through a Computer Physician Order Entry (Mettler, 2016). The system helps nurses evaluate the medical order for the appropriate form and identify any potential threats associated with duplication of orders.
Communication and Collaboration
Technology has transformed communication methods across healthcare systems globally. For instance, patients visit healthcare systems with different health issues. In most cases, nurses and other healthcare providers consider screening a picture through different X-rays. Comprehensively, these pictures provide nurses with vital data, including medical record number, name of the nurse and patient, patient’s date of birth, and description of the issue. Additionally, the pictures are merged with the patients’ results after tests. They can help nurses and physicians monitor the patient’s progress to determine whether the care plan is effective or requires changes (Vreeland et al., 2016). Furthermore, the picture helps physicians receive visual tests from nurses and interview patients at the care point.
Images are essential in improving communication between nurses and physicians and help in monitoring the results. Initially, nurses would misplace the paper documents easily, while on other occasions, nurses would take an extended period to compose the medical records. The loss of these documents sometimes led to delayed patient care, and patients could experience significant care problems. However, electronic records have helped save time while also enhancing the results of patient care.
Shared Decision Making
One of the primary factors supporting the data required to enhance decision-making and effective patient care is the care plan. Sometimes nurses can have the right understanding of a particular theme but lack enough experience; therefore, they depend on other nurses’ decisions for the appropriate care plan. Nurses can screen pictures and send them to the patient’s EHR, and help them identify the major complications experienced by the patientt and offer the right guidance until they address all issues. Moreover, technology has helped in shared decision-making by enabling physicians to evaluate and send the patients’ HER pictures (Grote & Berens, 2020). Comprehensively, physicians can communicate and collaborate to provide all patients with an appropriate and effective healthcare plan.
Laws, Policies, and Regulations
Healthcare departments have devices with secure access, and they require nurses or physicians to represent electronic medical record credentials to receive any patient records, including pictures and tests. Nurses need to record all medical records to help in healing progression and the documentation process to cover insurance issues. Additionally, nurses and physicians should protect special applications and use the technology to ensure the applications meet the required safety regulations. For the safety applications and policies, nurses have to include certain accountability standards to acquire patients’ scanned pictures and improve the patients’ safety and privacy. Furthermore, nurses and physicians have to consider any emerging healthcare issues when evaluating and assessing the policies.
In conclusion, the article has discussed several factors such as technical communication, collaboration, shared decision making, and laws, regulations, and policies that influence healthcare quality and safety within the health systems. Technology has played a massive role in changing and improving the level of quality and safety care within health care facilities, such as improving how nurses acquire and share the patient’s information. Nurses can screen pictures and send them to the patient’s EHR, and the nurse may identify the major complications experienced by the servant and offer the right guidance until they address all issues. Pictures provide nurses with vital data, including medical record number, name of the nurse and patient, patient’s date of birth, and description of the issue. For the safety applications and policies, nurses have to include certain accountability standards to acquire patients’ scanned pictures and improve the patients’ safety and privacy.
References
Grote, T., & Berens, P. (2020). On the ethics of algorithmic decision-making in healthcare. Journal of medical ethics, 46(3), 205-211.
Mettler, M. (2016). Blockchain technology in healthcare: The revolution starts here. In 2016 IEEE 18th international conference on e-health networking, applications and services (Healthcom) (pp. 1-3). IEEE.
Vreeland, A., Persons, K. R., Primo, H. R., Bishop, M., Garriott, K. M., Doyle, M. K., … & Bashall, C. (2016). Considerations for exchanging and sharing medical images for improved collaboration and patient care: HIMSS-SIIM collaborative white paper. Journal of digital imaging, 29(5), 547-558.