NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 1 Enhancing Quality and Safety

Enhancing Quality and Safety

Student Name

Capella University

NURS-FPX4020

Professor Name

Submission Date

Things can get complicated when confronting migrants and require a deep regard for the issues that they face and how best to support them. At the same time, migrants face language and cultural barriers and a lack of health and social services, which aggravate patient safety problems. This review focuses on a patient who is a 35-year-old migrant worker, whose health needs recent attention from nurses to advocate for optimal, safe, quality, and cost-effective care, which is culturally responsive and informed by best practice.

 Scenario

Maria is a 35-year-old migrant worker who recently got a job in the United States to improve her living conditions and opportunities. She attended a clinic complaining of chronic fatigue, headache, and stress. But when she spoke to a health care provider about her symptoms, Maria knew she would not be able to share everything about her health because of language and stigma issues. She has no permanent place to live, is not able to count on a place to eat, and is not covered by health insurance. But Maria’s care plan is more than just about interpretation; it’s about acclimating to the cultural, linguistic, and psychological context, and about providing social assistance referrals, so that patients can gain confidence in their physicians.

Factors Contributing to Patient-Safety Risks

In many cases like Maria’s, there are several aspects that are striking in terms of patient safety issues within health-care providers, notably due to patients’ origin, in her case, migration. Language barriers with health care providers are common, however, and can make it difficult for people to convey medical history and symptoms to their doctors (Shamsi et al., 2020). Her low insurance coverage, combined with a not very high class level, means that she can’t afford to spend a lot on preventive care, and is unwilling to reveal any details about her medical history, so her illness will continue to worsen.

A few barriers to the environment are not met: Maria has no health insurance, so it is difficult to access health care. She may not get access to the basic stuff, so she may not come when she is needed until her symptoms get worse, which means that she risks even more. It will be unable to offer her individualized and comprehensive treatment, such as mental health and community services, leading to many aspects of her situation being overlooked.

Evidence-Based Solutions for Improving Patient Safety and Reducing Costs

To evaluate the outcomes for Maria, integrated solutions must be implemented in order to maximize the protection of the patient and reduce costs, including the use of language translation and imparting cultural competency training to caregivers. For effective assessment and ensuing management, communication with the patient is vital. Interpreters help to protect Maria’s signs and concerns from being misinterpreted or from having conventional knowledge imposed on her, which would lead the physician to conduct tests on her. Cultural competence training helps practitioners appreciate issues with migration, including the psychological impacts of forced migration (Lau & Rodgers, 2021). The findings reveal that care coordination can effectively reduce negative medical consequences, boost patient satisfaction and treatment adherence, and reduce high-cost consequences and re-hospitalization.

Maria is another example of a good practice: Treatment that is delivered within a comprehensive framework that includes community services and mental health services. Linking her to housing, nutrition, and other health services, such as mental health, will help to focus on her socio-economic determinants. Structured follow-up of different types of communication can be implemented after discharge to remind Maria to attend her appointments and alert her when she has symptoms, which, if neglected, will increase her health-related problems. All these will improve the success rate of immediate identification of any patient’s condition worsening and will reduce the overall cost of operations as well as reliance on emergency services and hospitalisation, which is one of the most significant outcomes (Sheehan et al., 2021).

Nurses’ Role in Coordinating Care to Enhance Patient Safety and Reduce Costs

Throughout the entire project, nurses are well-positioned to share the patient’s needs with the healthcare team and vice versa, ensuring the needs of Maria are always met. Other caregivers should use the Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation (SBAR) communication strategy when working with other caregivers to help them understand and meet Maria’s needs. This might involve you communicating patients’ symptoms to your doctor, interacting with socialization, and whether the patient needs translators to help them manage or communicate their symptoms with a doctor.

The nurse needs to record Maria’s progress, the appointments, and any health issues using electronic health records (EHRs) to greatly minimise the chances of varying care. Educating and checking the patients’ status during the follow-up appointment can help reduce costs for nurses (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2023). For example, they know how to help her cope more effectively with her stress, how to identify when her symptoms are becoming more aggravated, and where to find assistance from those already in the community.

A nurse would also make reminder phone calls after Maria’s appointments to help her remember to do what is prescribed to treat the diabetes and also to address any concerns, questions, or issues in a timely manner. With this precautionary measure, disease can be diagnosed early, and potentially expensive emergency trips can be prevented. First, listen and assure Maria that she will be able to follow through on safety precautions and will need to see her at regular exams, but these will not cost her anything, that she will be on the path to safety, and they’ll start now.

Key Stakeholders for Coordinating Quality and Safety Enhancements

Striving for quality and safety in the care provided to Maria is the cornerstone of organizational goals, and this is what nurses need to focus on identifying in order to engage key stakeholders (Brown et al., 2020), such as primary care physicians, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals. The primary care providers are able to discuss Maria’s medical problems (but are unable to discuss the psychosocial issues such as homelessness and changing locations, which would need to be discussed by mental health providers). For example, they can support evaluation and referral efforts by communicating all the information that is available on Maria using structured communication processes, like SBAR.

The care plan, which covers care for Maria’s housing, food, legal, and financial needs, requires community organisation involvement as well as social work involvement. Maria’s risks to her health are related to socio-economic factors, and social workers have a role to play in linking Maria to programmes to address these risks. Furthermore, healthcare managers and politicians need to play a role to ensure policies like providing translation services, culturally competent healthcare programmes, and more are implemented. This situation creates the opportunity to work with stakeholders to make improvements that increase safety, save money, and improve the outcomes for Maria.

Potential Importance of the Stakeholders

No matter what role they play in the care of Maria, the different stakeholders involved in her care show that patient safety is a key asset and that better results are possible. Comprehensive care from primary-care physicians and mental health practitioners identifies and addresses her needs both physically and psychologically. They help remove the obstacles preventing her from receiving health care that might worsen her disease and assist in encouraging healthcare reform and preventive care in her social work and community-based groups, such as housing and nutrition policies (Ross & Zerden, 2020).

Healthcare administrators and policymakers have an important role to play in translating healthcare services and offering cultural competence training to guarantee that Maria can have equal access to healthcare. They work together to develop networks to improve the quality of care and build trust, and also help to lower the costs of providing care.

Conclusion

The care provided to patients such as Maria requires collaboration between a number of healthcare professionals and effective knowledge sharing, understanding, and sensitivity to respect culturally diverse people. Evidence-based practice combined with key stakeholder engagement and advocacy for programmatic changes at the macro-level will support the health professional to achieve desirable patient outcomes at lower cost. This evaluation highlights the need to understand the root causes of patient safety issues, leverage evidence to inform interventions to improve patient safety, and develop a plan to involve stakeholders in achieving safe, high-quality care.