Nursing Excellence

Researching about informed consent in surgeries has been an eye-opener regarding patient safety, compliance, support, and healthcare workers’ collaboration. Over the years, inconsistency in engaging patients’ pre-surgery has been rampant. Such inconsistencies endanger patients’ lives, expose them to other conditions, and increase medical costs, among other issues. In a study by Leclercq et al. (2010), a medical doctor was found guilty of performing surgery without considering the patient’s preference. In these last weeks of discussions, I will finally introduce my clinical project and tie it with the QSEN competencies that I have selected. In this case, I will explain why I decided to take up the project and how it relates and is supported by the Association of perioperative Registered Nurses (AORN). I will later explain areas of further research regarding the project to solidify my clinical practice. Lastly, I will propose solutions to the issues that I have encountered while working on this project.

Informed consent is a key concept in nursing. Over the years, healthcare professionals have engaged in undertaking surgery without proper signing. As indicated above, such actions endanger the patient and expose surgeons and nurses to legal issues. My CPP will investigate the existing information on the prevention of surgeries without a proper consent signed. The project also has an objective of instructing staff on the need for practice change, and it will also develop procedure devices that will be used to measure staff’s compliance. Latter, the project proposes procedures to follow in surgery cases to ensure that proper consent is signed. Overall, my CPP aims to reduce the number of surgeries undertaken without properly signed informed consent by the patient, surgeon, and witness. Since I earlier mentioned about safety, now I explore the QSEN competency.

The QSEN competency chosen in this project is an evidence-based practice. This competency ensures that patients are given the best possible healthcare based on both updated clinical proven data and evidence available. I will do so by assessing the AORN measures that include making sure that the patients, surgeons, and witnesses are signing the consent form before surgery.

The Association of perioperative Registered Nurses (AORN) is an essential resource in evidence-based practice. This organization offers evidence-based resources and training to nurses to promote the quality of patient care. In this project, implementing various resources provided by AORN will enhance patient safety and enhance the perioperative session outcomes. Most of my CPP project research was completed by reading journals online, talking to my mentor, textbook, and online websites and videos. Additionally, the school’s librarian offered advice. From these sources, I got a lot of solid information. However, some gaps were evident. In Singhal and Uthappa’s (2019) work, nurses never listed all the pre-procedure critical elements they offered to patients. The data offered duplicated present checks (patients’ identity and adverse events reports). In Allen’s (2016) study, on the other hand, poor communication was an issue where the nurse used different documents for pre-procedure recording while signing out. Nurse leaders should work towards crafting pre-surgery plans to be implemented in organizations to reduce uninformed surgical procedures. The nurse leader should ensure that the plans are distributed and incorporated into the organization’s system.

When safe surgical procedures are not followed, healthcare providers are exposed to legal actions, increased medical costs, and compromised patient welfare.  My CPP works towards ensuring that patients, surgeons, and witnesses get to sign consent before surgery is undertaken. In conjunction with improved patient safety and satisfaction, I incorporated the QSEN competency of evidence-based practice to improve patients’ outcomes. Most of the research information and resources were utilized by obtaining evidence-based practice from AORN.

References

Allen, B.  (2016). Effective design, implementation, and management of change in healthcare.  Nursing Standard, 31(3), 58.  doi:  10.7748/ns.2016.e10375

          http://qsen.org/competencies/graduate-ksas/

QSEN Institute.  (2020). Graduate QSEN competencies.  Retrieved from      

Singhal, S., & Uthappa, M. C. (2019). Role of a Checklist to Improve Patient Safety in interventional. Radiology. Journal of Clinical Interventional Radiology ISVIR, 3(03), 157-161.