Part 1
How Hypertension Impacts the Quality of Care, Patient’s Safety and Costs to the System and Individual
Over the last few years, hypertension has been prevalent in many states. Approximately hypertension has affected over 105 million adults. According to various researchers, the number of hypertensive patients will increase by over 1 million in the next five years. However, many hypertensive patients have struggled to manage the disease. Therefore, this paper discusses how hypertension affects the quality of care offered, patients’ safety, and the costs incurred by all stakeholders within a healthcare system.
Quality of Care
According to Kim et al. (2016), approximately 12% of deaths observed across the world are associated with hypertension. Hypertension has been caused by risk factors such as failure of detection, lack of awareness, and poor treatment and control methods. Various research articles have discussed suboptimal care among hypertensive patients and the lack of quality care. Quality of care is mainly associated with the challenges of patients, nurses, or healthcare facilities (Kim et al., 2016). The barriers associated with hypertension management are classified into three groups. For instance, capability barriers are caused by a lack of understanding of the behaviors necessary to manage hypertension. Additionally, intention barrios include poor attitudes towards the critical approaches made to manage the disease. Therefore, these barriers adversely influence the process of hypertension control, hence leading to low quality of care.
Patient Safety
Different researchers have determined multiple barriers affecting the safety of hypertensive patients. For instance, poor communication is a major barrier to patient safety since it leads to wrong treatments, unnecessary recommendations, and medical errors (Kim et al., 2016). Additionally, lack of collaboration within a healthcare system also impacts patient safety. When nurses and other healthcare providers fail to collaborate, they adversely affect patients’ safety. Additionally, failure to collaborate causes medical errors, hence risking patients’ safety within the healthcare system.
Cost Considerations
According to Carey et al. (2018), hypertensive patients incur more costs than those without hypertension. Approximately hypertensive patients in the U.S incur annual costs of $130 million compared to individuals without hypertension. The primary costs incurred by hypertensive patients involve different aspects such as prescriptions, emergency cases, inpatient and outpatient care. Approximately hypertensive patients incur costs averaging $8500, while individuals without hypertension incur costs averaging $4000 annually.
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How State Board Nursing Requirements Influence the Impact of Contact on Healthcare
The state nursing boards are responsible for establishing appropriate guidelines for nursing care, evaluating the nature of the nursing practice, and approving issues associated with licensed nurses. In detail, the Nursing Practice Acts (NPA) have been created specifically for nurses to facilitate patient safety and quality treatment. Comprehensively, nursing boards facilitate healthcare standards by training nurses to strengthen their relationships with patients (Bezerra et al., 2019). Additionally, the board ensures the engagement between nurses and patients is effective while also improving the quality of treatment and care. The NPA is responsible for establishing higher standards to identify the scope of nursing practices.
Extensively. The guidelines set by the state nursing boards emphasize mostly patient safety and managing healthcare costs to allow all patients to avoid poor healthcare services. The nursing needs of these boards manage revenue and expenditure obtained during the healthcare practices. Additionally, the state nursing boards introduce specific laws for the safety of all nurses by providing services. Moreover, different states introduce nursing organizations to provide better patient-centered care needs. Nursing practitioners should be responsible when introducing the laws; the key component involves nursing needs when providing care services to the patient (Bezerra et al., 2019). Therefore, understanding the needs helps in improving the relationship between nurses and patients.
The outcome of the introduction of the legislative laws is to improve patient satisfaction within a healthcare unit. Additionally, the legislative laws help to. Improve efficiency through ethical standards and state regulations. Intensively, nurses should attend to all patients with more respect and dignity. Therefore, nurses need to involve patients in decision-making and ensure all their needs are fulfilled. The nursing board guidelines ensure that both nurses and patients do not violate legislative laws during the care process (Bezerra et al., 2019).
It is an appropriate method of improving the relationship between nurses, family members, and nurses. Moreover, the state board guidelines help in regulating healthcare costs within the care facilities. Furthermore, the state board guidelines help in supporting inter-professional relationships between the nurses and other healthcare providers.
The main objective for the relationship between nurses and patients involves satisfaction, quality care, and patients’ well-being. Therefore, any patient within the care units should be attended to by nurses who understand the process well. Further, the state board guidelines enable nurses to meet the expected standards and ethical principles when providing healthcare services to enhance their relationship with the patient. Moreover, the state board helps in protecting patient rights.
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Strategies to Improve Quality of Care, Patient Safety and Reduce Costs Associated with Hypertension Management
Quality of Care
Improving the quality of care plays a significant role in hypertension management. Comprehensively, nurses should offer patient-centered care and apply the middle-range model to enhance the quality of care they provide. Additionally, the middle-range model will guide nurses in several steps to improve the care offered to hypertensive patients (Drevenhorn, 2018). Furthermore, the theory involves various concepts associated with hypertension management. For instance, the concepts associated with hypertension management focus on involving patients in lifestyle modifications. The concepts associated with patients emphasize evaluating their ability to modify behaviors.
Enhancing Patient Safety
Nurses and other healthcare providers can provide various strategies to improve patient safety. For instance, improving communication can help nurses avoid medical errors and unfair treatment that can affect the safety of patients. Therefore, nurses need to improve communication skills to strengthen their relationships with the patients. Additionally, patient-centered care is a better approach that nurses can apply to improve patient safety. According to Drevenhorn (2018), this approach enhances patient safety since the patient’s care is personalized.
Improving Costs
There are various principles associated with the reduction of costs in hypertension management. The first principle involves lowering blood pressures after the first symptom of high blood pressure. According to Carey et al. (2018), early interventions help nurses and physicians avoid the problems associated with hypertension. It also helps the patient to avoid the risk of other chronological issues. The other aspect involves ensuring the patient’s blood pressure is in a safe zone. The next aspect of improving costs involves using community resources effectively to manage hypertension. The last principle for improving costs includes addressing the challenges affecting hypertension management.
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Part 2
The first step I made in this process was to determine whether the patient was ready for lifestyle modifications. To assess the problem effectively, I met with Mr. K.M, a 58-year-old male previously diagnosed with hypertension, to discuss the progress. When evaluating and assessing the challenges, Mr. K.M has encountered over the last few years, I understood he struggled with the knowledge and understanding of hypertension and lived in a rural town lacking the best care services. Additionally, the patient claimed to have encountered stress after he lost his job.
In my opinion, I thought of the middle-range theory as the best for Mr. K.M since it ensured effective control and management of hypertension. In his response, Mr. K.M revealed that he considered starting from scratch and that over the last few months, the situation has improved.
Additionally, I asked the patient whether he was ready to implement a new lifestyle modification approach to control hypertension. Mr. K.M was quick to respond that he would do whatever it takes to live a longer life free from hypertension. Moreover, we discussed the patient’s experience with diagnosis and treatment of hypertension; in his response, Mr. K.M stated that “I feel like a transformed patient, who can manage himself and only visits the nurse to monitor his progress.” However, throughout the assessment, I discovered that the patient experienced several challenges that affected his management activities. Some of these challenges included poor communication, limited resources, and lack of education.
The next step I considered was to discuss with Mr. K.M the best leadership approaches which could improve his health. In his response, the patient claimed, “If I receive the proper guidance on managing the disease, I believe the problem will change completely.” In this assessment, I selected the patient-centered model as the best approach to help Mr. K.M acquire everything he needed to manage the problem.