Question

HOW DOES BENCHMARKING IMPROVE NURSING CARE

CONCEPTS OF PROFESSIONAL NURSING; QUALITY LEADERSHIP

Answer 1

1) Clinical practice benchmarking is a quality improvement tool. It facilitates, structures and formalises how best practice is compared, shared and developed. It supports nurses in effectively meeting patients' needs.Benchmarking is a comparison and measurement of a healthcare organization's services against other national healthcare organizations.Benchmarks can be tailored to specific areas of nursing, such as acute and longterm care hospitals, hospice, and home health facilities.Safe: Avoid injuries to patients from the care that is intended to help them.Effective: Match care to science; avoid overuse of ineffective care and underuse of effective care.Patient-Centered: Honor the individual and respect choice.Timely: Reduce waiting for both patients and those who give care.The purpose of benchmarking in healthcare is to improve efficiency, quality of care, patient safety and patient satisfaction.The process involves looking at standards, best practices and evidence based practices and then identifying potential areas of improvement.Benchmarking is the process of comparing a practice's performance with an external standard.Benchmarking is an important tool that facilitators can use to motivate a practice to engage in improvement work and to help members of a practice understand where their performance falls in comparison to others.
2) Professional Nursing Concepts: Competencies for Quality Leadership takes a patient-centered, traditional approach to the topic of nursing education and professional development. This dynamic text engages students in recognizing the critical role that nurses play in healthcare delivery.Competencies for Quality Leadership,Fourth Edition takes a patient centered, traditional approach to the topic of nursing education.Also featured is content on nursing roles, incivility, expanded roles and scope of practice, patient centered care, and team based learning.The focus for nurse leaders needs to be on collaboration, becoming great role models and creating a sense of community through mentoring, clear communication and conflict management.Strong nursing leadership helps encourage other nurses to function as team units. Nurses leaders or otherwise must have strong interpersonal skills to be successful.They must be adept at communicating with each other, with doctors and other staff, with patients and with patients families.The articles defining the characteristics of the nursing profession list them as: Strong commitment, long-term and regular education, special body of knowledge and skills, ethics, autonomy, power for standard service, valuing and existence of professional associations.