The fundamental assumption of the nursing profession is that nursing care leads to the accomplishment of high-quality outcomes for clients, their families, and their communities (Bell, 2020). In order to reduce suffering, prevent disease and damage, and promote health, nurses have a social responsibility to carefully examine the impact of their nursing interventions on client outcomes. A crucial component of professional practice is demonstrating the impact of Advanced Practice Nurses (APNs) duty because they are valuable information concerning client outcomes and nursing. It is necessary to evaluate the procedures, structures, and outcomes linked to APN performance and the care delivery network they operate. As a result of the growing emphasis on outcomes in healthcare programs, the evaluation of the outcomes of APN’s work has received more attention in the past several years. Consumers have stressed the importance of measuring care outcomes to guarantee that they receive appropriate, high-quality, and efficient care delivery (Bell, 2020).
The common measurements for the outcome of the care that any healthcare provider delivers in the healthcare setting include the mortality rates, number of readmissions, safety of the patient care that is delivered, effectiveness of care and the patient experience and satisfaction with the care provided to them among others. Timeliness is also used as a quality determinant when assessing and evaluating care provided to the patients (Glarcher & Lex, 2020).
A healthcare agency’s quality indicators can be used to gauge the quality of care. Nursing care practice can be evaluated using indicators provided by healthcare organizations. Various indicators are provided by the organizations, such as those for pediatric quality, inpatient quality, preventative quality, and patient safety. If the care delivered follows healthcare quality indicators, nurses can make that determination.
Another way to ensure excellent care is through the national committee on quality assurance measures (NCQAM) (Bell, 2020). The organization’s standards, activities, and measures are evidence-based and aim to raise the standard of healthcare. Information used in advanced nursing practice, such as patient outcomes, is evaluated using this tool. Nurses and organizations can evaluate the quality of their care using quality assurance measures. In advanced nursing practice, it is equally critical to measure and monitor the results of interventions and services. The measures show how much of a positive impact the care has on patient outcomes. The output delivered can be measured and monitored using a variety of indicators. Death and mortality rates are two metrics that can be used as indicators. Nurses can track the impact their patient care has on the overall mortality rate. Because of this, they can determine if the care they are providing reduces death rates.
Patient Safety improvement is another strategy of measuring the quality of care that the APNs deliver. The assessment of safety practices in healthcare includes evaluation of elements such as medical and nursing errors, timeliness to attending to the patients, reduction in the statistics of the patients that are readmitted aftercare is delivered to them and statistics of those who get hospital-acquired illnesses while they are being taken care of by the advanced practice nurses (Bell, 2020). Patient safety is a good reflection of the outcome of care that creates a clear picture of the competency of the nurses.
In conclusion, these measures and others like rating scales for the nurses can help identify areas that need improvement to enhance the quality of care. Nurses should evaluate themselves and be evaluated by others to ensure that their care creates a better outcome. More quality measures should be placed in healthcare service delivery to improve patient safety and quality of care.
References
Bell, S. G. (2020). Evidence-Based Practice Competencies for RNs and APNs: How Are We Doing? Neonatal Network, 39(5), 299-302.
Glarcher, M., & Lex, K. M. (2020). Advanced Nursing Practice in Austria under consideration of outcome measurement. Zeitschrift für Evidenz, Fortbildung und Qualität im Gesundheitswesen, 155, 11-16.
