Evaluation on the effectiveness of EAU on programme planning and delivery in Maryknoll Fathers

Evaluation on the effectiveness of EAU on programme planning and delivery in Maryknoll Fathers’

Introduction

Patient safety in healthcare institutions is an area that has recently received more attention. Healthcare institutions of different forms face varied types of safety issues. Most of the body of literature available about patient safety is related to primary healthcare settings like emergency and acute patient care. The role of the nurse in patient safety is as multifaceted as the complex nature of the safety concerns that arise in these healthcare settings. Therefore, the nurse plays a role that should not go without being assessed and appraised. This literature seeks to evaluate patient falls as a safety concern in various health care settings and relate the arising issues with the role the nurse can play referring to the effectiveness of EAU on programme planning and delivery in Maryknoll Fathers’ School. The literature will evaluate the issue of patient safety with respect to falls in the chosen institution. Falls have attracted more attention in the recent past years in the health care systems as more falls have been reported. For instance, the US National Center for Patient Safety report (2004) showed that falls reports accounted for 47% of safety issues reported in the previous year- 2003. Elsewhere, statistics have shown that falls account for a significant proportion of reported safety cases in the UK each year. Therefore, falls become a very significant part of the patient safety topic. Without developing keen interest into the issue of falls as patient safety concern, the long run implications would be an increased cost for falls management. Improving the effectiveness of EAU on programme planning and delivery in Maryknoll Fathers’ School thus rests on the ability to understand the problem and having a deep understanding of the connection between the role of the nurse and safety concerns that arise from falls.

Application of this information/rational of the research

As a nurse and other programs, the information concerning the Evaluation on the effectiveness of EAU on programme planning and delivery in Maryknoll Fathers’ Schools in this study plays a critical role in aiding the understanding of the responsibility they carry. First, an understanding of the dangers that many patients face and the effectiveness of EAU on programme planning and delivery in Maryknoll Fathers’ School is essential for many organizations to be in a position to devise ways and means of fighting back and guaranteeing the safety of patients not only in Maryknoll Fathers’ School but other areas as well. This is because one cannot prevent something that the nurse or practitioners are not aware of. On the other hand, this information is important to doctors on EAU plus others, as they need to understand how their patients are faring on for them to align themselves in a way that would enable them to take emergency care in case of some problems. The information will also applicable in nursing career as it would be of defining significance in the classification of clinical decision-making. The information can find a good application in the role the nurses’ play in interpreting the underlying nursing intuition and medical diagnosis.

Literature review

Many researchers and scholars continue to explore the issue of patient safety and the role of EAU in prevention and management of patient safety. With respect to patient safety, experts have recognized the importance of prevention and proper management in EAU. Among the risks that patients are exposed to, while in the hands of medical practitioners are injuries and even death caused by falls. Many people have experienced falls in their lives when being attended to in medical facilities. According to Morse (1997), these falls are either accidental for eaxmple happen without a fore thought by the victim or are induced to cause further injuries in the patient and/or even death. Therefore, health facilities have the responsibility of coming up with preventive measures to minimize cases of falls within their structures. Studies that have been carried out in England shows that falls cases are high as 152,000 every year. In the United States, statistics shows that the statistics are even high with patient population being put at 200,000 in 2006. Most of these cases were reported in in-patient medical facilities, which comprised of about 98% of the total falls.

The UK Institute for Innovation and Improvement (2009) points out that inpatient falls can substantially increase the patients’ time in wards and increase the costs substantially. The institute carried out a research and established that even though a fall may occur without causing significant injury on the patient, it may lead to an increase in the patient’s length of stay by an average of three days. On the other hand, a fall the resulted in a serious injury was found to increase the length of the stay by 17 days on average. Before the falls occur, there is need for prevention to check on the additional number of days a patient would have to stay since the days have a financial implications (NHS 2009). However, if the falls occur, proper management measures must be put in place to guarantee a speedy recovery.

Bayer et al (2005) suggest that patient safety with respect to falls can only start through a proper record keeping tradition where the number of inpatient patient falls in the health care institution is ascertained, associated increased period of stay established then develop a management process. Secondly, the scholars point out that individualized patient care can help to reduce the falls significantly.

The nursing profession comes with a responsibility that can only be successfully achieved if there is a proper understanding of the circumstances that underpin patient falls and the effectiveness of various program especially the ones undertaken by EAU in this context. Medical experts have pointed out falls among patients are principally caused by weak muscles in the patients, walking problems and gait problems. For these reasons, falls (due to ineffective programs) occur more frequently among older patients of ages 65 and above as compared to middle-aged patients. Muscle weakness and walking or gait problems are the most common causes of falls among nursing home residents.

Roles of the Nurse with respect to improving patient safety against falls

As indicated earlier, the nurse plays a role that is multifaceted in the prevention and management of falls in patients. The roles may fall under provider of care to the patient, manager, or member of the team in the institution. These roles include providing care to patients, educating the patients, communicators, and teachers. Nurses have the responsibility of aiding every patient to be able to attain the highest level of wellness that can be achieved by a patient. While it is his or her vision that each patient attains complete wellness, there should also be a provision for compromise since not every patient can get complete healing. According to Rosdahl & Kowalski (2007), nurses have the duty of making sure that every detail of the patient is recorded on a daily basis to provide information that can help in monitoring the progress of the patient (p.15). This information is then communicated to the concerned medical team within the health facilities for further action.

The EAU nurse can be construed as a provider of care on various perspectives in institutions that they operate in. The nurse as a provider of care is responsible for providing care to children. In this perspective, the nurse demonstrates his role as a provider by understanding of pediatric settings where children and their families need care through clinical competence of the nurse. This means EAU on programme planning and delivery in Maryknoll Fathers’ School plus in other institutions should be very effective.

Secondly, the nurse demonstrates his work as a provider of care by offering professional examination of adults who may be in acute and chronically ill conditions. In his duty as a provider of care, the nurse exercises confidentiality. Lastly, the nurse maintains a close personal contact and emotional closeness with his clients thus offering value negotiation. Nurses are also responsible for helping clients in solving their ethical dilemmas, offering care to children and to the mental health clients.

The problems faced by EAU

EAU program planning and delivery in Maryknoll Fathers’ School and other institutions has not been successful in the past due to the fact that it has been using the model which has been dealing mainly with patients and thus using another would change the whole medical system in their operational areas. It is evident to say that the medical system would not be the same owing to the fact that using Hygeia and other diseases would enable both the rich and the poor patients of to get access to medical care since it could be affordable and of high quality. Everyone wants to be given medical services that are of high quality but for many years it has not been possible for many patients to get access to it since the systems that has been existing has been too expensive for most of them to get access and that it has not been equitably provided to them thus the system would have been different due to the fact that it would have benefited all the citizens no matter what their economical status is.

The system would have been very different from what we have currently because many of the problems that we are facing presently would not have been there be it economically or socially since people would not have been put in a position to overspend their money or to misuse the available resources. As we look deep into the changes that the current world has gone through, it is true to say that it is so because of some reasons that lie behind the using their current model of health care because the world has moved to a greater height with the effective use of the rapidly growing technology which would not have been there if the other system was used and this is just to show that any system can have a disadvantage since it cannot be completely perfect.

In case the system was used then most people would not have improved in their social and economical lives because these changes have come with the improvement in technology both in terms of transport and communication systems. The system would still be very effective since people would have learned to do things practically and that they would rely more on their own knowledge compared to people in the current world who rely mostly on the excessive use of technology. There would not be problems that we are facing in the current world such as the introduction of new diseases that lack cure or take long to be cured such as cancer and the rest and that most people would be in a position to save money for other needs and not just spend all of it on medical care as it is done by many in the current world.

The most important thing to note about how this system would have functioned is that rules and regulations would still be there and that they would still have to be followed thus making the legal and ethical obligations to remain the same everywhere. This model of health care would not be very complicated to deal with because most of the things that would have done in it would not be out of reach because they would have been very cheap and easily accessible to all. Some of the problems that would be facing this system would be insufficient medical qualification since most people would not be qualified and there would be inadequate provision of resources due to unavailable of improved technology. Poverty would still have been there since most of the social and economical problems would still be very confidential to many people and that life would be very hard for many people due to hoarding of ideas.

The lesson that majority learn from this system employed by EAU is that they should be creative and to provide services of high quality in order to meet the medical needs of the citizens of a country and also to make the services equitable for everyone in the society. Taking all these into my health care practice will be very helpful in the sense that the legal rights will still have to be followed and respected and that the services will be within the reach of everyone thus enhancing improvement into the economy.

Ethical and Legal Implications of EAU

The current EAU healthcare management system is characterized by a number of challenges. These challenges range from the provision healthcare services to accessibility of healthcare and the management of the various health units not forgetting on programme planning and delivery in in various institutions. As far as the provision of healthcare is concerned, there is compromise in the provision of quality health care. The challenge of accessing health care comes as a result of the ever rising cost of health care and health insurance. The management of the various units of healthcare systems has also proved to be challenging and as a result efficiency and effectiveness in the various units have gone down. Consequently, the problems in the current healthcare management systems have various ethical and legal implications.

Measures taken by most health organizations (EAU included) of incorporating current technology in healthcare systems as a way of enhancing services have proved to cause certain ethical and legal issues. Problems associated with adopting new technologies in the healthcare systems lies in the identification and establishment of systems whose integration would not be troublesome to its end users. The adaptation of these technologies in the health care systems is essentially beneficial since they are fast and effective especially when it comes to the diagnosis and prescription processes. However, they require a high level of competency and professionalism failure to which medical errors can occur thus causing deaths or lowering quality healthcare. The ethical implication of this trends include the loss of lives that could have been saved, an estimation of 44,000 to 98,000 needless death occur each year in the United States of America. Furthermore the public is bound to lose confidence in healthcare systems in which they entrust there lives to. Legal implications of this trend emerge in a case whereby patients or the close keens of patients may take legal action against a particular health organization due to medical errors caused in the process of adapting to the new technologies.

Accessibility of cost effective health services and health insurance coverage in most healthcare institutions in the United States has major ethical and legal implications. Ethically, the poor have been victimized such that they cannot receive quality health care due to the fact that they cannot afford the high costs of healthcare. This also implies that only the rich can access quality healthcare. Moreover, the rise of health costs puts the financial security of most families at risk. Legal implications pertaining to the accessibility of cost effective healthcare are bound to emerge in the instance whereby the federal government steps in to regulate the prices of healthcare. Defaulters of these regulations may face legal action. In addition, legal issues may emerge in a case whereby a health institution fails to provide health care to a patient who ends up dying due to the lack of funds. Legal suits could be filed against the alleged health institution.

The management strategies of the various healthcare institutions considerably encompass a number of ethical and legal implications. The key objective of healthcare institutions lies in providing quality and efficient healthcare. In order to achieve this objective, the government and other stakeholders need to take charge in ensuring that health facilities are effectively equipped. On the other hand, medical practitioners and health care providers need to play their roles in order to ensure that this objective is actualized. Sadly, these roles have been neglected and as a result certain ethical implications have emerged. Neglect of obligation is an ethical issue and a breach of work ethical codes. This also put the lives of people at risk since healthcare is a grave line of work .Legal implications of these trends revolve around the issuance and the breach of work permits. The law is fervently against the issuance of work permits and licenses to healthcare facilities and practitioners who neglect their line of work or provide substandard services.

Public health is very high on the United Kingdom’s health care strategy agenda, and the nurses of the community are seen as been instrumental in helping in the reduction of health inequalities, in the promotion of social inclusion and in improving people’s circumstances and lifestyles. Government policies put emphasis on the partnerships between communities and agencies and working with individuals in the community to reduce the health inequalities and improve health. The new primary-care groups: local-health groups in Wales are required to shape health services, assess the health needs/necessities, reduce the health inequalities, listen to views of the users and also work in partnership with the local agencies. This will definitely require a wide range of skills which a small number of primary health experts presently have. Few fund-holders under-took any health needs/necessities assessment or involved the patients in buying, and the government has given-out little financial infrastructure or managerial, conceptual for public involvement.

The nursing profession like any other is subject to lots of changes. The processes involved in nursing are numerous, such as recruitment, marketing, training, patient handling, information management and many other administrative processes. Processes are prone to setbacks that hinder the efficiency and streamlined operations of within a system. Thus the units within the system will at times show signs of poor performance and the entire process in focus ends up failing.

Tomey (2007) shows that the overall rate of change of process is a sure sign of the organization’s capability to adapt to their immediate and extended environment. Nursing is not faced with a lot of competition as is the case of financial organizations in the world. For this reason a lot more mistakes can be overlooked. Though, critical of all these, is the kind of employees that a health institution employs. This forms the core of all the activities within an organization

Thus the most important process that sieves for the right employee is the process of recruitment. Recruitment follows distinct steps of planning, selection of individuals, interviewing or cross-examination, employment and further training and development. The process to be changed should cater especially for the initial point which is the selection of individuals Zerwekh & Claborn (2008).

Identification of problem or process to be changed in EAU

The process in focus here is recruitment of professionals within a health care institution. Over many years nursing profession has been very passive insofar as recruitment of professionals is involved. Times have changed and the contemporary setting requires for the interactive recruitment of professionals who best fit the requirements of healthcare facilities. Recruitment aids in introducing sieving and attracting the right professionals and talents into a health care service provision. To the health care institution, recruitment process is very important in changing the service delivery aspects and in turn maintaining functional efficacy in the operations of a health care center.

Nevertheless, proper recruitment assists in forming a flow of professional content from the learning institutions into the healthcare facilities and later this expertise gets to the patient or client indirectly. The process of recruitment commits the organization into spending a lot of resources in the planning, selection and development of the professional within EAU. For this reason recruitment is full of data such as number of employees selected, the training schedule for the new employees and the distribution of new employees by departments. All these data is useful in the sourcing for resources within the company for their use. The overall effect is the alignment of various other departments such as procurement, ICT and training department on the viability of designing ways to provide the needed material when required. In the same way, the forecasting of future organizational requirements is easily done in all departments. This can then be measured in relation to the relevance of such developments to the overall achievement of organizational goals and vision.

Change is usually motivated by several factors which include, regulatory compliance, the benchmarking of performance, the improvement of efficiency, the improvement of selection of professionals into the job market and the ultimate forecasting of an organization’s needs. All these aspects have been outlined in-depth in the subsequent sections of this paper. Benchmarking involves management identifying the best firms in the industry and then comparing the performance standards including quality-of business with those of their own business. Recruitment processes assist in ensuring that the right health care professionals get to serve the patients as per their professional and educational backgrounds. Recruitment is a process that ensures the right talent and skills are attracted and retained in the health care system as per the agreeable standards in the health care industry.

On the whole, proper recruitment process aids in first acquiring the right professionals as required by the market and nursing standards. This then creates a professional outlook for health environment. As per the legal requirements, recruitment should be in a non-discriminatory manner and should be based on the well agreeable metrics in nursing. Such include the educational background plus skills and experience in relevant areas such as community health care or surgery environment and others. Through improved recruitment, matters of occupational health such as the kind of lifestyle professionals live at work can be addressed. This is due to the fact that recruitment would ensure that the professionals taken in have necessary qualifications in handling safety and health aspects. The performance of tasks is usually based on professional standards that are well agreeable by the nursing profession. With better recruitment, the health care forges ways and means to overcome aspects of improved efficiency with the operations sections such as wards, and pharmacy. Professionals employed to manage healthcare will have the ability to exercise synergistic coordination of tasks and thus spend more of the work hours in adding value to the health care systems.

Better professionals are usually tailored to understand the working dynamics and can easily adapt in working with team members and forging ways to improve team work through team buildings and desired coordination of the health care’s work force. Change is a process that involves learning. Learning starts from one individual and moves to the group and then the institution or organization. This is regardless of the time it takes for change to take effect. This means that change can be considered as a systematic process that yields almost immediate actions or results. The former ways and processes are eliminated and new ones implemented. The affected individuals find a ware to cope with the new systems. If people do not accept change, the result is a life of stress and discomfort.

Change cannot take place effectively in a group without strategic planning. This is because the process requires a feedback to analyze how effectively a change is being implemented. The feedback should flow smoothly from the lowest rank to the highest rank in the organization. The interaction process allows for the identification of how a given change will affect the lives of the persons involved. It leads to an identification of new methods of effecting change and the means to overcome possible barriers. Since change affects people’s behavior, the planning process should be utilized to identify how change will impact on the people involved and the behavioral characteristics required to effect change. People are bound to refute change but effective communication will overcome the resistance. There will be a smooth flow of the transition of the required change when a theory is utilized as compared to change without theory. In my case, the change will flow from the board to the patients being served.

In conclusion, nurses play a very important role in ensuring that patient safety is maintained in health facilities. Whereas nurses may be ignored by the rest of the medical community because of the work they do, they must be available if the safety of the patients is to be guaranteed. On the other hand, they are able to ease the work of professional doctors and improve on the quality of treatment that is offered to their clients.

EAU has tried to enforce changes in for the last years to ensure the health and safety of the institutions in which they operate. State, local and federal laws have been created and improved constantly. All these have been designed at protecting the wellbeing of program beneficiaries and particularly the kids.