Relation Of Leadership And Safety And Quality Of Care

Topic: Discuss the relationship between leadership and patient safety and quality. Critically reflect on how your own leadership style will contribute to influencing and promoting a culture of quality and safety in clinical practice.

Details-Critical reflection essay requires

Criteria 1-Introduction includes an expertly constructed aim and provides an exceptional, clear, comprehensive and concise overview of all major concepts and issues to be addressed in the body of the work. 

Criteria 2 – Discussion of the relationship between leadership and patient safety in clinical practice. Includes  Definition of patient safety and quality in discussion- Expert substantiation from relevant, current, quality academic literature.

Criteria 3-  A concise description of your own leadership style and its essential characteristics- Expert substantiation from relevant,  current high quality academic literature. 

Criteria 4- Critical reflection on how, why, when and where, you could apply your leadership style to promote patient safety and quality in clinical practice as a new graduate.  

Conclusion- Outstanding, clear, concise, conclusion, which includes original patients insights, and draws upon all significant points raised in the essay and draws these together in an expert manner.

References- 5 recent from 2009 peer reviewed, academic, research/evidence based journal articles. (preferably from nursing management and leadership journals) to adequately support critical points. References must be in APA style adequately and correctly given, both in text and in the final reference list.

Introduction

Ensuring patient safety and quality of care is one of the most important objectives of any healthcare organization. Patient safety is ensured through the prevention of harm, or accidental injury, in patients that have negative consequences on care outcomes. On the other hand, quality of care ensures that patients are provided with proper and adequate therapeutic interventions, and necessary care support, which improves healthcare outcome in patients. Nursing personnel plays a key role, in ensuring patient safety and quality of care, in any healthcare organization. They influence the safety and quality of care by their own leadership styles (Schultz and Schultz, 2010). 

The present article will portray the issues of safety and quality concerns in patients. This includes a review of medication errors and unaddressed adverse events. The article will also elucidate the methods that may improve the quality of care and the role of nursing leadership in improving safety and quality of care. Finally, a reflection of practice will be done, to address areas of improvement and sharing of best practices for effective resource management, which will help in improving safety and quality of care.

The relation between Leadership and Quality/Safety of Care

Patient safety aims to ensure the prevention of harm or accidental injury, in patients that have negative consequences on care outcomes. It has been noted, that accident and complications due to treatment errors are common in health care setups. Adverse events and injuries occur from mistakes and accidental lapses, on the part of caregivers. These errors can be attributed to human errors, technological errors or system failures. Human errors in clinical practice are often attributed to excess workload, lack of adequate and updated knowledge on the area of care, lack of person-centric care approach in identifying the needs of the patients. Such errors can lead to accidental falls, medication errors, which consequently delays healthcare outcomes and prolongation of hospital stay. Patient safety issues have been attributed to causing harm between 3% to 17% of hospitalized patients (Cordingley, 2009). 

The quality of care aims to ensure that patients should be provided with proper and adequate therapeutic interventions, and necessary care support, that improves healthcare outcomes in them. Quality of care is associated with an adequate and updated knowledge of any therapeutic area. Such measures include understanding the adverse effects of a medication, correct diagnosis of symptoms in a patient, change in treatment protocols in a relevant therapeutic area, titration of medication doses, proper pharmacological and physiological knowledge and its implication in care outcomes in a patient.  Quality of care also includes proper communication with patients, peer-group, and multi-functional care team, in assessing the condition of a patient and incorporation of proper intervention strategies that help in early recovery according to prognosis. Nowadays, in almost every healthcare organization quality management systems are introduced, to ensure safety and quality of care in patients, by reducing the risk of adverse events, and minimizing medical errors (Cordingley, 2009)

Leadership is an important attribute in any care provider, as it helps him or her to approach a particular health care goal, through his or her team of caregivers. Nursing staffs play a major role in ensuring patient safety and quality of care, in any healthcare organization. They influence the safety and quality of care by their own leadership styles, by integrating cross-functional teams, in the care delivery process. Leadership is defined as the process of influencing other individuals to accomplish a particular goal. Leadership can be primary or secondary in nature. Primary leadership is defined as a formal role attributed to an individual for managing his or her team to accomplish a certain goal. Secondary leadership is an informal way of developing attributes of leadership qualities, in subordinates who can provide situational leadership, in the absence of an individual endowed with the responsibility of formal leadership. In fact, true leaders are those who can develop the competencies and decision making capacities in his or her subordinates so that they can rise to situational exigencies (Martindale, 2011).