Nursing
Nurses often become motivated to change aspects within the larger health care system based on their real-world experience. As such, many nurses take on an advocacy role to influence a change in regulations, policies, and laws that govern the larger health care system.
For this assignment, identify a problem or concern in your state, community, or organization that has the capacity for advocacy through legislation. Research the issue and use the “Advocacy Through Legislation” template to complete this assignment.
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You are required to cite to a minimum of three sources to complete this assignment. Sources must be published within the last 5 years and appropriate for the assignment criteria and relevant to nursing practice.
While APA style is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected, and documentation of sources should be presented using APA formatting guidelines, which can be found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
ANSWER
Advocacy through Legislation
| Problem | ||
| Clinical handoffs also considered shift reports, sign-outs, and handovers, take place in different settings within the healthcare value chain. This entails transferring professional accountability and responsibility for all aspects of care for a patient and a group of patients (Galatzan and Carrington, 2018). For instance, handoffs frequently occur not only between the healthcare providers but also nurses. Therefore, it acts as an informational coordinator and communication partner for all healthcare professionals to facilitate the continuity of care within the healthcare environment. The clinical environments are complex and dynamic, presenting many challenges for effective communication among healthcare professionals. Hands-off can be unpredictable and irregular due to multi-specialty and cross-disciplinary transition of care, leading to coordination difficulties (Galatzan and Carrington, 2018). Poor communication and ineffective handoff are among the preventable barrier to quality and safe healthcare for patients. Ineffective handoffs can result in several patient safety issues. Communication breakdown is one of the main contributing factors to handoff issues. Communication breakdown has led to incorrect medication information, missing allergy and weight, and incomplete information. | ||
| The idea for Addressing Solution | ||
| The legislation will provide standardization in daily operational activities by improving the handoff procedures and guiding the desired delivery of quality care. Through legislation, the healthcare organization will offer the healthcare providers a proper handoff procedure and mode of communication in giving shift reports. The legislative advocacy will focus on developing a common communication tool to influence the enactment and modification of handoff procedures. Ideally, effective communication leads to effective and safe patient care. For instance, utilizing the SBAR communication tool in nursing communication will facilitate the passage of medical and patient information, thus making care safer and patient-centered (Shahid and Thomas, 2018). The nurses will also obtain information easily, thus reducing the time utilized during handoff. SBAR communication tool is a validated and reliable tool that aims at reducing adverse events in hospitals due to improved communication among healthcare providers. SBAR boosts the accuracy of communication and effectiveness of the handoff in the continuity of care (Shahid and Thomas, 2018). Therefore, the legislation on a common communication mode will reduce medical errors, long hospitalization durations, and increased complications in the healthcare system. The legislation will reduce the consequences of failed communication, such as medication errors, inaccurate care plans, and delayed hospital discharge. | ||
| Research the Issue | ||
| Evidence 1 | Poor handoff communication leads to severe events due to inaccurate, incomplete, and omitted data, leading to ambiguities between the receiving and sending providers (Lewis, McConkey, and Patel, 2021). Patients have encountered medical errors and severe complications due to overdosing, missed out procedures, and poor management, such as late surgeries resulting from poor communication during the handoff procedures. For instance, nursing handoff creates gaps in care that lead to errors. Other consequences of poor handover include unnecessary care and treatment, delays in diagnosis, delayed and missed communication, repeated tests, and incorrect treatment. Complications linked to inter-professional differences in terminologies, expectations, and work practices have made it challenging to develop a shared mental model for effective transition between the healthcare providers. This is because the conflicting perspectives and expectations increase the barriers and challenges to effective handoffs. | |
| Evidence 2 | Proper handoff procedures lead to effective communication, which builds good patient and care provider relationships that positively influence the patient’s health outcome. (Shahid and Thomas, 2018). Ideally, continuity of patient care is accomplished through the concise and clear transfer of patient’s medical information from one healthcare provider to another. The healthcare providers need to develop a strategy and plan that will enable them to change the current practices that lead to ineffective handoff procedures. Advocating for better handoff procedures through legislation will enable the healthcare system to implement proper handoff procedures, thus improving health outcomes. For instance, the outgoing and incoming nurses should have the responsibility of being keen on the patient’s conditions and needs to exchange all the appropriate and necessary future information about the patient. This will ensure that the patient is in safe hands, thus avoiding medication errors such as patient injury, increased healthcare cost, and death. | |
| Stakeholder Support | ||
| Stakeholder(s) Supporting 1 | Healthcare professionals and Nurses- The nurses and healthcare professionals will implement and respect legislations to improve the quality of care. As healthcare is evolving and becoming specialized, healthcare providers are likely to encounter more handoffs than the complexity a few years ago. | |
| Stakeholder(s) Supporting 2 | Policymakers and lawmakers will facilitate the implementation of the legislation through policies within the healthcare systems regarding handoff procedures to improve quality and safety in patient care.
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| Stakeholder Opposition | ||
| Stakeholder(s) Opposed 1 | The nurses and healthcare providers are among the stakeholders that would oppose the utilization of the legislation. Most of the nurses and healthcare professionals will consider the legislation as a waste of resources and time. They view the legislation as increasing stress and fatigue among a limited number of care providers within the hospitals. However, they will be educated to improve their awareness and change their perceptions. | |
| Stakeholder(s) Opposed 2 | Healthcare organizations are likely to oppose the proposal since it requires training and financial resources to adopt and sustain the communication formats. Educating and engaging the healthcare organizations will enable them to understand the validity and reliability of the communication tool in improving the handoff procedures. | |
| Financial Incentives/Costs | ||
| Improper handoff procedures lead to increased healthcare costs due to delayed discharge, medication errors that lead to wastage of resources, and negative health outcomes that strain resources (Lewis, McConkey, and Patel, 2021). Therefore, poor handoff procedures result in high resource and financial costs of patient harm. Additionally, due to the wastage of resources in treating patients and managing adverse complications of medical errors, healthcare organizations will increase the cost of healthcare services. The legislation will foster a standardized handoff communication that will ensure the gaining of the necessary information during handoff to reduce medical errors and wastage of resources. Reducing wastage of resources and medical errors will play an essential role in reducing the cost of healthcare. | ||
| Legislature: Information Needed and Process for Proposal | ||
| Describe the steps for how you would present this to your legislator. | Information regarding the proposal will be obtained through research and evidence-based practices that will enhance the proposal’s passage. The information required for the proposal includes past research on the issue of poor handoff procedures and proposed solutions to the problem and its effectiveness in reducing medication errors. The proposal will begin with creating awareness for the stakeholders and people impacted by the problem. Educating and engaging the policymakers and lawmakers will build a close relation to facilitating the advocacy for the desired change. A multi-disciplinary approach will then be followed to ensure a diverse partnership and strong engagement. This will lead to a desire for change since all the stakeholders speak the same voice and network to bring change. | |
| Christian Principles and Nursing Advocacy | ||
| Servant leadership serves the best in healthcare organizations since it focuses on meeting the needs of the patients and strengthening the healthcare team. As servant leaders, the stakeholders are best in making changes in the healthcare organization. Jesus is the ultimate servant leader who has been chosen to model and teach various ways of living. Therefore, the stakeholders should act as servant leaders to serve the needs of the patients by providing quality care. The advocacy aims at bringing change that will boost the health outcomes and quality of care. | ||
References
Galatzan, B. J., & Carrington, J. M. (2018). Exploring the State of the Science of the Nursing Hand-off Communication. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 36(10), 484-493.
Lewis, K. D., McConkey, S., & Patel, S. J. (2021). Handoffs: Reducing Harm Through High Reliability and Inter-Professional Communication. In-Patient Safety and Quality Improvement in Healthcare (pp. 207-217). Springer, Cham.
Shahid, S., & Thomas, S. (2018). Situation, background, assessment, recommendation (SBAR) communication tool for handoff in health care–a narrative review. Safety in Health, 4(1), 1-9.
