Question

Discuss the correlation between nursing education and positive patient outcomes. Include current research that links patient safety outcomes to advanced degrees in nursing. Based on some real-life experiences, explain whether you agree or disagree with this research.

CAN YOU ADD THE REFENCES WHERE YOU RETRIEVE THE ANSWER PLEASE

Answer 1

Knowledge and skills are required to sustain quality of care and patient safety in healthcare. Nusring education thus plays an important role in sustaining the qulaity of healthcare. Comparisons have been made between the qualiy of health care provided and the level of nursing education in various studies. Generally, it is thought that developing new skill sets and training provived in advanced courses result in an improvement of care provided. Understanding of the entire healthcare system better and a more in-depth understanding about patient care is assumed to help nurses make better and faster decisions, make fewer errors and better guide the patients and their families. In order to objectively assess the presence of significant differences due to the further training provided, various outcomes have been compared in studies. This does mot assume that nurses with basic level of training are not good at their jobs or safe, but the take is that nurses with higher level of training can make a difference.

The oucomes that have been employed to assess include comparison of mortality rates, development of complications including congestive heart failure and deep vein thrombosis, failure to rescue, development of hospital acquied infections etc.

A cross-sectional study was conducted by Blegen et al in 2003 to examine the effects of registered nurse education by determining whether nurse-sensitive patient outcomes were better in hospitals with a higher proportion of RNs with baccalaureate degrees. The study used data from 21 University Health System Consortium hospitals and analyzed the association between RN education and patient outcomes. The study found that the hospitals with a higher percentage of RNs with baccalaureate or higher degrees had lower congestive heart failure mortality, decubitus ulcers, failure to rescue, and postoperative deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism and shorter length of stay. The study supported the Future of Nursing report to increase RN education levels is supported by these findings.

A cross sectional study was conducted by Rahman et al in 2015 in Malaysia to predict the impact of nurse level of education on quality of care and patient safety in the medical and surgical wards in Malaysian private hospitals. A survey by questionnaire was conducted and a total of 652 nurses working in the medical and surgical wards in 12 private hospitals participated in the study. The study concluded that nursing educational level was not associated with the outcomes of care in Malaysian private hospitals. However, the study had major limitations including low proportion of nurses with higher training

Real life experiences- to be added

References:

1. Blegen, Mary A., et al. “Baccalaureate Education in Nursing and Patient Outcomes.” JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, vol. 43, no. 2, 2013, pp. 89–94., doi:10.1097/nna.0b013e31827f2028.

2. Rahman, Hamzah Abdul, et al. “Nurse Level of Education, Quality of Care and Patient Safety in the Medical and Surgical Wards in Malaysian Private Hospitals: A Cross-Sectional Study.” Global Journal of Health Science, vol. 7, no. 6, 2015, doi:10.5539/gjhs.v7n6p331.