Nursing_Role

Role of Professional Nursing Organizations in Maintaining a Healthy Workplace Tanya Barbeau Introduction The role of professional nursing organizations in maintaining a healthy workplace is one that focuses on patient safety, nurse retention and recruitment. The legacy of Florence Nightingale regarding the importance of total healing environments for patients has had a momentous influence on the development of the fundamental values of healthy work environments. Difficult working conditions are cited as a factor in the nursing faculty shortage. ( Kuehn,2010) Workplaces can be healthy if nurses and employers are determined in their desire to concentrate on not only the physical environment, but also less substantial hurdles to staff and patient safety. A healthy work environment not only establishes a desirable workplace, but also provides the road to positively impact the effectiveness of the work itself. A healthy work environment is one that is energizing, healthy, successful, and able to flexibly adapt to a constantly changing set of circumstances. Attention to, and action based on, an understanding of the complexity of a nurses work and the value of implementing strategies, have the potential to achieve the goals of environments that include safe, quality care, desired patient outcomes, and nurse recruitment and retention (Ebright, 2010). Nurses need to have up-to-date information and situational awareness about what is happening in the clinical setting. Healthy work environments that support and foster excellence in patient care focus on designing processes to eliminate actual and potential system gaps that increase the difficulty of the nurse’s job. Strategies in Practice Strategies professional nursing organizations have used to promote a healthy nursing workplace, having patient dashboards, creating “healthy promotion” committees, monthly newsletters, internship programs, bulletin boards and staff mentors. The use of patient dashboards gives everyone in a clinical area an accurate picture of patient needs, it smoothes the progress of continuous decision making about work priorities. The dashboards would reflect up-to-date information regarding team member availability and access, team assignments, and a patient’s status related to physical location, procedures ordered, procedures completed, results reported. Monthly clinical newsletters can be nursing focused which can be used to acknowledge accomplishments of the safe, welcome new employees and offer certification programs for continued education for the staff. Through mentor programs, the experienced nursing is paired with inexperienced nurse. These supportive efforts may decrease the stress and demoralization that new nurses experience when they begin their new job in today’s complex, fast-paced environments. Creating internship programs, which allows new hires to attend a classroom courses, followed by an individualized orientation period. During the classroom time, the orientee can be taught many of the clinical skills that they will need to function adequately in their new settings. After completing their internships, new nurses are paired with an experienced nurse who shows them the clinical skills in practice. Formalized, easily accessible processes that encourage new nurses to seek out willing, enthusiastic, experienced nurses for questions or guidance in critical situations are essential for patient safety as well as retention. Within some units, the new nurse is given a limited (smaller) assignment; this allows the new nurse to help prioritize, organize and give good patient care; without overwhelming them. Using bulletin boards as a way to get other staff members input or involvement with improvement programs. The bulletin boards can also have monthly themes centered around holidays, or “questions of the month.” It can be used as a way to not only provide teaching materials but also a way to boost staff moral and incorporate staff involvement. And the development of “healthy committee” councils allows the staff members to give their input, and the committees meet on those ideas which can help them develop ways of improvement. Clinical Examples And an example of a strategy that organizations have down to promote a healthy work place is by setting up mentor programs. Mentor Programs are created to help improve nursing retention. This type of program pairs the experienced nurse with an inexperienced nurse. The mentors offer coaching and career guidance. Formal mentoring programs are specifically tailored for new employees because many hospitals report that their greatest retention problems occur in the first year or two of the nurse's arrival and sometimes as early as within six months. The goal with this program is to prevent nurses from quitting, because they may feel that no one cares about them or how overwhelmed they may be getting by working in a new setting. In my experience some times the experienced nurses may be reluctant to sign themselves up for being a mentor; but once you commend them and enlighten them how their knowledge will benefit the new nurse; they tend to take part in becoming a mentor. Sometimes, the experienced nurse has to be reminded that they were once new and inexperienced nurses also. This type of program not only is useful for passing on knowledge but it can also be a way of creating relationships between staff that might not normally associate with one another. Conclusion As nursing students we go through our courses and clinicals with the guidance of our nursing instructors and professors. During our classroom time our learning and lectures are submitted and graded and our corrections are given to us. In the clinical setting we meet with our instructors, discuss our cases and treatments for the day; and provide some basic care with the support of our nursing instructors at the end of each clinical day. Once we have become individual practitioners, those built in supports are gone; we are no longer working towards passing the class or completing a clinical. It can be a stressful realization once we enter the working world. And without those supports we may not end up at a hospital that offers internships, mentors or even acknowledge our accomplishments. The result of this is unappreciated clinicians who may not put their best effort into their work, or nurses who become too overwhelmed to stay on the job and they quit or worse patient fatalities from a clinician who didn’t have a “go-to” person. Creating mentors for the new nurse, or having thorough nursing internships can produce better outcomes for the patients by less infections, medication errors or patient injuries and give more confidence for nurses who may be new to a hospital unit or support to a nurse practicing in a higher level of patient care than they are accustomed to working in. At one hospital, unit-based councils received the results of all audits and used that information to develop 90-day plans or shared bestpractice with other units. Wins included an increased in documentation completion, increased recognition for excellence in care, and decreased restraint use. (Lewis, 2008) References Ebright PR; Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 2010 Jan; 15 (1): 11 (journal article) ISSN: 1091-37 CINAHL AN: 2010587462 Kuehn MB; Creative Nursing, 2010; 16 (4): 193-7 (journal article) ISSN: 1078-4535 PMID: 21140876 CINAHL AN: 2010902889 Lewis L; Vickers A; Critical Care Nurse, 2008 Apr; 28 (2): e53-4 (journal article - abstract) ISSN: 0279-5442 CINAHL AN: 2010252082 Domrose, Cathyryn, 2002 Feb; A Guiding Hand. Retrieved from http://www.nurseweek.com/news/features/02-02/mentor.asp | , |