Describe implementation of current Nursing Care Model

Nursing Care Models Sample essay paper

Read your text, Finkelman (2016), pp- 111-116.
Observe staff in delivery of nursing care provided. Practice settings may vary depending on availability. (I\’m an OB nurse)
Identify the model of nursing care that you observed. Be specific about what you observed, who was doing what, when, how and what led you to identify the particular model.
Write a 5 page paper that includes the following:

Review and summarize two scholarly resources (not including your text) related to the nursing care model you observed in the practice setting.
Review and summarize two scholarly resources (not including your text) related to a nursing care model that is different from the one you observed in the practice setting.
Discuss your observations about how the current nursing care model is being implemented. Be specific. Nursing Care Models Sample essay paper.
Recommend a different nursing care model that could be implemented to improve quality of nursing care, safety and staff satisfaction. Be specific.
Provide a summary/conclusion about this experience/assignment and what you learned about nursing care models.
Write your Nursing Care Models Sample essay paper using APA format using Microsoft Office 2010 or later

NR447 Nursing Care Models Paper Rubric

Nursing Care Models Sample essay paper

Introduction

Nursing care models are tools that describe and generalize the approaches applied by nurses on offering their professional services. The intention is to improve resource-use efficiency in minimizing costs and ensuring that nurses are assigned to areas where they are most needed and can offer their best. In fact, nursing care models have been around for as long as nursing has existed as a profession with its galvanization occasioned by the reality that nurses are a limited resource and their education must acknowledge this aspect. Still, improvements in medical technologies and development of new nursing professions have refined the existing models even as new models are presented and implement in both practice and education (Finkelman, 2016). Overall, models are tools that guide the provision of nursing care and practice with emphasis on improving efficiency and reducing costs even as they guide practice and education. Nursing Care Models Sample essay paper. The present analysis acknowledges the existence of nursing models by describing a model in action and offering insight into strategies for improving care outcomes by proposing aspects that can be improved to achieve the overall goal of improving efficiency and reducing costs.

Discussion

As an obstetrics (OB) nurse, I am engaged by a clinic specialized in offering gynecology and obstetrics services to females between their puberty and menopause. In fact, the nursing services I offer revolve around addressing problems with the reproductive system as experienced by females to include pregnancy, labor and delivery. As a result, I work in the clinic’s labor and delivery department.

Observed nursing model: Interdisciplinary model of care

As a practicing OB nurse, I have consistently observed the clinic applying the interdisciplinary model of care in my labor and delivery department. In this case, the department has an interdisciplinary committee that is led by representatives from all clinical and non-clinical professions that work in the department to include nurses and physicians. The committee has the primary task of designing and implementing a patient care delivery system that enhances safety, efficiency and effectiveness. The system has been formalized as a ‘structured three-concentric circle chart’ Nursing Care Models Sample essay paper. The chart’s outer circle is comprised of non-clinical and indirect medical personnel whose input is necessary but do not have any direct contact with the patients. An example is the laboratory personnel who receive biological samples from the direct medical personnel, conduct tests on the samples, then present the results to the attending medical personnel by filling in the patients’ sheets. At no time do the laboratory personnel have any direct contact with the patients. Nursing Care Models Sample essay paper The middle circle is comprised of clinical personnel who have direct contact with the patients to include the attending nurses (charge and floor nurses) and physicians. They engage the patients at the personal level, talk to them, collect biological samples, and monitor their condition even as they prescribe medication and observe outcomes. The innermost circle is comprised of the patients and their family members. It is clear that the model incorporates personnel from different medical occupations and professions designed to meet the required patient needs so that each profession completes a unique part that are then combined to present the whole care. Having the concentric circles has facilitated task assignment since each profession is aware of its unique responsibilities. Additionally, it has facilitated accountability since any positives or negatives can easily be traced to a source (Kaakinen et al., 2015; Porter-O’Grady & Malloch, 2016).

I understand that at the core of this model is the need to emphasize on improving quality by identifying the importance of all professions serving in the department and meeting the inter-professional and inter-disciplinary needs with the intention of enhancing integration, communication, collaboration and cooperation for reliable and continuous care. Having observed the model in action, I believe that it has facilitated the development of practice standards that address each profession’s unique roles. For instance, the responsibilities expected of nurses are well differentiated from the responsibilities expected of physicians and laboratory technicians. Additionally, it has ensured that the department makes full use of the available skills and knowledge. That is because each profession and individual is assigned tasks based on competencies and capabilities. For instance, laboratory personnel offer test results based on their observations while physicians present a diagnosis and prescription based on the test results. Besides that, this model has eliminated redundancies since there are no professional overlaps with each profession responsible for a specific aspect of care. In addition, it has it has improved communication links between all persons involved in the care by establishing clear communication lines. For example, the model identifies the charge nurse as the person to be approached for questions when there are suspected problems with the nursing care. Also, the model has promoted interdisciplinary collaboration. Nursing Care Models Sample essay paper. Overall, I understand that with the increasingly complex needs presented by patients, this model offers a good approach for addressing the needs through a combination of knowledge and expertise with the patient as the focus.

Skill mix model

Other than the interdisciplinary model of care, I believe that the skill mix model would achieve good results for my labor and delivery department by presenting complementary benefits. The skill mix model develops an acceptable balance between productivity and quality. It acknowledges although productivity is useful in determining staffing levels, this is a purely commercial outlook that imposes limits on the time assigned to each patient. The model addresses this concern by optimizing the skills available in a department thus allowing the facility to reduce costs. This is achieved by allowing personnel to practice at the apex of their licenses thus ensuring that the patients receive the best possible care even as greater job satisfaction is achieved among the personnel (Porter-O’Grady & Malloch, 2016). Nursing Care Models Sample essay paper The higher job satisfaction is accompanied by lower turnover rates so that the facility does not need to spend more on the hiring process and orientating new personnel. Similarly, the receive benefits since personnel can now spend more time with them thus improving care outcomes. The skill mix model is particularly useful in environments where complex care is required and staff shortages are being experienced. These conditions are true for my department since offering the gynecology and obstetrics services has been limited by staff shortages. In applying the model, the department would pair the more skilled personnel (who demand high salaries such as registered nurses) with their lesser skilled counterparts (who demand lower salaries such as vocational nurses) to work together following a pre-accepted prototypical plan. The key is to delegate tasks to less skilled personnel under the supervision and direction of their more skilled counterparts. The two groups have the same work schedule with the supervisors acting as clinical preceptors (Porter-O’Grady & Malloch, 2016).

The decision to apply the skill mix model should be galvanized by a facility’s objective of offering high quality care. Nursing care provision is largely dependent on the frontline personnel who must be appropriately skilled and engaged to guarantee that they will complete their tasks seamlessly within a team environment. The reality is that there is a shortage of qualified medical personnel. Additionally, patients’ medical needs are becoming increasingly more complex and require new approaches. Also, medical facilities are faced with increasing pressure to protect their commercial margins by mandating productivity and staffing ratio targets that ignore the overall costs and skills mix thus overburdening the personnel who are employed. Besides that, reimbursement pressures are becoming more unbearable. Despite these challenges, the facility is not exempted from providing high quality nursing care Nursing Care Models Sample essay paper. Optimizing nursing skill mix allows the facility to offer high quality nursing care despite the mentioned challenges since less skilled personnel can be engaged to complete relatively easy tasks to maximize the time spent in patients care. This frees up the more skilled personnel the more complex tasks that only they can complete (Bernamn et al., 2014; Finkelman, 2016). For instance, lobotomy does not require a highly skilled registered nurse and can easily be completed by a well-trained and less skilled vocational nurse. In essence, applying the skill mix model allows the medical personnel to spend more time with the patients at a lower cost without compromising the care quality. This means that optimizing the skill mix (around total costs and patients’ needs) for nurses in my department would allow the facility to deliver high quality, effective and safe nursing care in a fiscally responsible way.

Conclusion

It is not enough to offer professional nursing care to improve patients’ outcomes. Rather, it is imperative to model the care delivery so that it is structured around acceptable medical and education goals. Financial reality and skilled personnel limitations demand that nurse staffing decisions be made with cost and patients’ outcomes as considerations. Interdisciplinary model of care and skill mix model describe two nursing care delivery models that are intended to improve patients’ outcomes. The interdisciplinary model of care promotes interdisciplinary collaboration through combining knowledge and expertise with the patient as the focus. The skill mix model offers a complementary perspective by including a cost perspective since it allows the nursing personnel to spend more time with the patients at a lower cost without compromising the care quality. In this respect, nursing care models propose aspects that can be improved to achieve the overall goal of improving efficiency and reducing costs. Nursing Care Models Sample essay paper.

References

Bernamn, A., Snyder, S., Kozier, B., Erb, G., Levett-Jones, T. … & Stanley, D. (2014). Kozier & Erb’s Fundamentals of Nursing: Australian edition (3^rd ed.). Melbourne: Pearson Australia.

Finkelman, A. (2016). Leadership and Management for Nurses: Core competencies for quality care. London: Pearson Education.

Kaakinen, J. R., Coehlo, D. P., Steele, R., Tabacco, A. & Hanson, S. (2015). Family Health Care Nursing: Theory, practice, and research (5^th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: F. A. Davis Company.

Porter-O’Grady, T. & Malloch, K. (2016). Leadership in Nursing Practice: Changing the landscape of healthcare (2^nd ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Nursing Care Models Sample essay paper.