Introduction
In nursing, the sole work of a nurse or registered nurse is to offer care to patients and ensure everything is in accordance with the doctor’s requirements (Greenfield & Braithwaite, 2008). It is, therefore, the responsibility of the nurse to ensure quick recovery of the patients thanks to the nursing skills and competence. However, in recent years, it has been a daunting task for nurses as they focus on implementing adequate and sufficient care for patients due to factors hindering the provision of excellent health services to patients. This study looks into patient-centered care and how it stimulates health services offered to patients.
Patient-Centered Care
Patient-centered care is defined as the ultimate provision of quality care to patients combining efforts of the patient, his/her family, and the nurses while using the patients’ values as the guide to the essential provision of health care (Greenfield & Braithwaite, 2008). In a case scenario, I was recently practicing patient-centered care on a sickly old man who had a bacterial infection. Due to his old age, his immune system was attacked fast and he needed to be under observation to reduce the risk of the infection reoccurring.
His family was apprehensive of this requirement as they did not think that it was a serious case as opposed to attacks like strokes or cardiac arrest. I informed the family of the seriousness of such an attack to an old person and the consequences if not well taken care of. The family was further involved in the process of taking care of their loved one and appreciated my role as the nurse administering care to the patient. Upon improvement of his health, the patient was discharged.
The principles of patient-centered care in this scenario were the involvement of family members, the collaboration between family and the hospital, my communication, support, and information, and collective emotional support.
Issues of Accreditation
- The need for accreditation agency is essential in today’s nursing programs. According to research by Greenfield and Braithwaite (2008), an accrediting agency underscores the quality of nursing programs and ensures that nursing programs offered in institutions meet and surpass the requirements for a nurse practitioner. An agency ensures that nursing programs offered in institutions do not differ from state to state. The increase of nursing programs in the recent past has seen many institutions providing substandard practitioners as their competence is questionable due to poor quality programs. The need for the accreditation of nursing schools is to ensure the provision of at least a minimum standard of competency.
- According to Greenfield and Braithwaite (2008), an accreditation agency looks for various factors, which include but are not limited to standards for excellence in nursing programs, methods of building and implementing documents, values, and guidelines for brilliant programs, and suitable criteria for assessment.
- The quality criteria for a nursing school that is reviewed by the accreditation agency as the most important are communication and cooperation. Communication between the nursing school and the accreditation agency leads to understanding the need for a quality curriculum. This results in cooperation, where all stakeholders of the nursing program share ideas and views on how to better the programs.
- A quasi-governmental agency is an organization that is guided by the rules and laws of a nation but works independently from the government (Ronald, McGregor, Harrington, Pollock, & Lexchin, 2016). This type of agency is normally funded by the government for its operations and most current accreditation agencies are categorized as quasi-governmental agencies.
Conclusion
Patient-centered care guarantees the provision of quality care to patients through the incorporation of the efforts of the patient, his/her family, and the nurses while using the patients’ ideals as the channel to the necessary provision of care. The accreditation of nursing schools ensures that at least the minimum standard of competency is observed.
References
Greenfield, D., & Braithwaite, J. (2008). Health sector accreditation research: A systematic review. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 20(3), 172-183.
Ronald, L. A., McGregor, M. J., Harrington, C., Pollock, A., & Lexchin, J. (2016). Observational evidence of for-profit delivery and inferior nursing home care: When is there enough evidence for policy change? PLoS Med, 13(4), 1-19.