National Nurses United

CE2_Oct REV 11/6/10 1:38 PM Page 13 This home study CE is part one of a two-part series. Look for the second installment and the CE quiz to appear in the next issue of National Nurse. T Description his home study course examines the impact of scripting and rounding on the autonomous practice of registered nurses that interferes with their critical role as patient advocates. Scripting and rounding schemes are being aggressively marketed, incentivized, and implemented in a variety of acute-care and outpatient settings using deceptively reassuring terms on embracing change, transforming care at the bedside, and increasing customer satisfaction designed to create and influence the public's "perception" of quality. It describes a new restructuring model for nursing, which is aimed at deskilling and automating RN interactions with patients. Under these new schemes, patient outcomes are secondary to patient satisfaction scores based on customer service and hospitality as practiced by companies such as Disney and five-star hotels. These schemes are being mandated by hospital policy over the objections of direct-care RNs despite the fact that there is a dearth of evidence linking patient satisfaction to positive clinical healthcare outcomes. rates of poor patient outcomes. Numerous other studies have found that patients in short-staffed hospital units are more likely to have higher rates of hospital-acquired illnesses and adverse outcomes, such as pneumonia, upper gastrointestinal bleeding, urinary tract infections, shock, longer hospital stays, and failure to rescue. "Failure to rescue" is defined as the death of a patient with a life-threatening complication for which early identification by nurses and medical and nursing interventions can influence the risk of death. As of March 2004, the largest of these studies on nurse staffing, ( jointly funded by AHRQ, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the National Institute of Nursing Research) found the following: In hospitals with high RN staffing, medical patients had lower rates of five adverse event outcomes. Major surgery patients in hospitals with high RN staffing had lower rates of UTIs and failure to rescue. Higher rates of RN staffing were associated with a 3 to 12 percent reduction in adverse outcomes. Higher staffing at all levels of nursing was associated with a 2 to 25 percent reduction in adverse outcomes, depending on the outcome. Three AHRQ-funded studies found a significant correlation between lower nurse staffing levels and higher rates of pneumonia. Another study, funded jointly by AHRQ and the National Sciences Foundation, examined the relationship between nurse staffing and hospital patient acuity (the average severity of illness of the inpatient population). Acuity determines how much care a patient needs: the higher the acuity, the more care is required. This study found: A 21 percent increase in hospital patient acuity between 1991 and 1996. Objectives upon completion of this home study RNs will be able to: Articulate their major advocacy role in the delivery of safe, therapeutic, and effective patient care where the patients' individual healthcare needs, interests, and wishes are respected and protected. Explain the potential of protocols and patient interaction scripts for replacing individualized human interaction in the delivery of A total decrease of 14.2 percent in the ratio of licensed nursing healthcare. staff to acuity-adjusted patient days of care because of the increase Describe how rounding, scripts, and rigid protocols can supplant in patient acuity. critical thinking and override the independent professional clinical The skill mix of nursing staff shifted, and as a result, RNs were judgment of registered nurses. forced to take on additional supervisory responsibilities that took them State why safe staffing with specific, numerical RNaway from the bedside at a time when their patients to-patient ratios, and the requirement that hospitals needed more nursing care. staff up from the minimum based on individual patient Concerns that have arisen from increased patient Submitted by the Joint acuity, is an evidence-based practice that improves acuity and increased workload appear to be directly Nursing Practice patient outcomes, results in cost-savings, and increases related to job dissatisfaction expressed by nurses in a Commission, DeAnn both patient and nurse satisfaction that allows directvariety of research studies. McEwen, RN, and care RNs to be in control of the nursing process. These reports were developed and written by outHedy Dumpel, RN, JD side research and academic organizations designatProvider Approved Background ed as Evidence-based Practice Centers, and are by the California based on rigorous, comprehensive reviews of relein 1996 the institute of medicine (iom) issued Board of Registered vant, peer-reviewed scientific literature. The a report that recognized the importance of deterNursing, Provider AHRQ's goal in sponsoring these reports was to promining appropriate nurse-to-patient ratios. The #00754 for 2.0 contact hours (cehs). vide the scientific foundation that public and private IOM's analysis of staffing and quality of care in Recognized by all organizations can use to improve the quality and hospitals concluded by calling for "a systematic states with the excepdelivery of healthcare services. effort" (on a national level) to collect and analyze tion of Arkansas, Although inadequate staffing places a heavy relevant data for the purposes of informing and Delaware, Massachuburden on nurses and adverse events are painful for developing public policy. setts, Minnesota, Montana, North Carolina, patients, there is a considerable financial burden According to research funded by the Agency for and South Carolina. as well. Another AHRQ study found that all adverse Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) hospitals events (pneumonia, pressure ulcer, UTI, wound with low nurse staffing levels tend to have higher O C TO B E R 2 0 1 0 W W W. 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