How Upskilling Of Nurses Can Improve Patient Care
Will you consider revisiting a hospital where the nurses are not trained enough or have enough experience to deal with patients? Whenever we decide to visit a doctor, we ask in our circle for recommendations or Google the reviews about a particular hospital to check its rating and number of satisfied patients. When it comes to patient satisfaction, it depends on a doctor’s demeanour and expertise, delivery of primary care services, and the availability of trained nursing staff. Nurses are primary caregivers, and they play a vital role in delivering quality care or interacting with patients.
The profession of nursing is booming, yet it faces a shortage of staff. However, training is one of the fundamental parts of the modern healthcare system and services. With advanced medicine and treatments, the nurses and doctors must keep up with the modern trend and implement the methods. Various training methods have been tried to impart relevant skills to improve healthcare services and primary care delivery. However, the methods and treatment practised within a hospital significantly impact a patient’s outcome.
Healthcare is a growing industry, and upgrading skills have always been beneficial. Institutes and organizations encourage their employees to upgrade their skills and be more technology literate. Stable and consistent health services increase the quality of care, leading to positive patient outcomes. With the continuity of care nursing, nurses and patients can collaborate towards a common goal of care management and enhance the quality of care. Doing so will help the healthcare organizations to meet the growing demands of patients concerning quality care and top-notch health services.
The article aims to highlight the significance of nurses opting for upskilling and its impact on their careers.
Specialized care
A hospital accommodates a variety of patients suffering from different diseases with varied intensity. For instance, patients in-home healthcare require professionals with more advanced skills to provide specialized care. Although nurses already have the required skill set and know the regular bedside care that a patient needs, nurses still need to learn about specialized care for geriatric or dementia patients. Nurses working in home healthcare require additional training to hold the variation in care delivery processes. The increase in home healthcare services has urged many nurses to upgrade their skills and work more confidently in their field.
- Delivering individual patient care
Nurses visit different rooms and cater to different patients’ needs within a hospital. Every patient’s need differs from others, and nurses need to know what a patient needs. Individualizing patient needs allows a nurse to develop services tailored to the patient and help them recover to better health. Knowing every detail about a patient and answering their calls makes it easy for nurses to cater to each patient and offer the services tailored to their needs. In addition, learning about individualized patient care allows nurses to connect with patients better and help them with their self-care goals and better health.
Promoting self-care
Many nurses believe in providing total care to patients. However, Upskilled nurses focus more on empowering self-care among patients. Open-ended questions can help nurses achieve their goal of encouraging patients to take care of themselves. In addition, patients must be educated on the importance of self-care to reduce hospital visits. For example, suppose a patient has to revisit the hospital to seek the treatment of the ailment they had previously treated. In that case, it will decline the quality of care as the goal of a hospital is to treat the disease and help a patient recover. Educating self-care to patients can significantly decrease their number of revisits to the hospital.
- Patient education
Very few of us have the basic understanding of the medical terms that we get to hear at a hospital or through someone else. Patients admitted to a hospital or visiting a hospital for the first time needs assistance in understanding their health, illnesses, medication, and treatment protocols. Nurses are known to be the best in communication. Still, if they fail to educate patients about their health, it will decline patient care. Nurses can help the patient tell them about the impact of medicine or educate a caregiver in an easy-to-understand language. Upskilled nurses ensure that patients are comfortable enough to seek additional information regarding their treatment or any other concern.
Promoting well-informed diagnosis
Nurses have the privilege of varied expertise and knowledge to work with different doctors and teams. These different rounds and rotations with different departments within a hospital allow them to learn and understand new procedures. It adds to their knowledge and helps them improve the quality of care. Every successful treatment and a positive patient outcome depends on a correct and timely diagnosis.
Whenever patients see a doctor, they only spend a few minutes writing a prescription and some diagnostic tests based on their symptoms. Those who leave a doctor’s office knowing what’s wrong with them or what treatment regimens are best for them are more satisfied than those who don’t. Conveying the diagnosis to a patient can be a challenge, but nurses can help patients understand these details.
Conclusion
The Healthcare system’s primary goal is to provide quality care to patients and reduce costs. These goals are easy to achieve if a hospital has a well-trained staff and nurses with adequate knowledge and skills. However, medical errors are inevitable, and they can happen anytime. Nurses can play a substantial role in reducing errors by coordinating with doctors to report a patient’s health progress and the effectiveness of the treatment plan.
Reducing the chances of medical errors can enhance the efficiency of a healthcare system and help in optimizing other operations running in a healthcare organization. In addition, patients getting discharged from the hospitals need additional information about post-hospital care. Nurses can help such patients by ensuring the continuity of care post-hospital by educating them and preventing relapse or revisits.
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