Patients often bond with their nurses. A day’s worth of care tends to outshine a few minutes spent with a doctor who walks into, and promptly out of, a hospital room. In fact, patients can get emotional if a certain nurse who has taken care of them for hours finishes her shift. (It is not abnormal for a nurse to stay on longer to continue providing care and comfort in such an instance.)
Traditionally, nurses are viewed as, and arguable are, the face of health care.
Yet nurses are usually not consulted by administrators when practices and policies regarding care optimization are changed, notes a recent Forbes article. But who better to learn how to improve quality and efficiency in the healthcare system than from the people who are working with hospital patients regularly?
Empowering nurses and giving them leadership roles aids patients and their recoveries, according to studies. The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) began a 16-month program in 2012. It provided innovation and leadership training to teams of staff nurses at 42 hospitals located in six states. The study empowered “bedside nurses as clinician leaders and change agents” to see if that would have any effect on patient care and hospital savings.
From the results of four teams (with two to complete their programs by year’s end), empowered nurses helped to decreased a patient’s hospital stay in intensive care units by a day. Nurses also knocked off one day of need for patients using a ventilator. And the amount of infections and complications in the intensive care unit were halved. And each team projected savings anywhere from $120,000 to $6 million. To learn more about how each team accomplished these results, or to implement some of their practices at your health care facility, read the full article and visit AACN.org.
“Studies confirm that empowered nurses provide the best patient care,” said AACN President Teri Lynn Kiss, who was quoted in the article.
De Vore, one of the nation’s top healthcare recruiters, looks for ambitious candidates to fill important nursing employment needs for healthcare facilities around the U.S. To submit your resume as a potential candidate for current or future job openings through De Vore, click here. View the latest career opportunities through De Vore here. Feel free to call us at 877-411-4358 to talk to one of our health care recruiters.
