NURS FPX 4035 Assessment 4 Improvement Plan Tool Kit

Improvement Plan Tool Kit

Student Name

Capella University

NURS FPX 4035

Professor Name

Submission Date

NURS FPX 4035 Assessment 4 is a toolkit of annotated evidence-based resources helping nurses address poor discharge education in medical-surgical. One shows the importance of Med-Surg patient safety units. There are many negative effects on Med-Surg patients and on staff because of things like short/fast hospital readmissions and not knowing or understanding the medications and verbal/written discharge instructions given. Limited time and health illiteracy are some of the many reasons why this happens. But patient safety priorities in their specialty can be addressed by nurses through novel methods.

It is the responsibility of nurses in the rudimentary stages of their training to acquire and combine many modes of communication and integrate themselves with the other members of the healthcare team, which includes the use of discharge modules, record systems, and the application of instructional methods. The purpose of the care plans is to help the nurses and other health care staff prepare care plans in an organized manner that helps the patient leave the facility in a safe manner.

Annotated Bibliography

Patient Education and Health Literacy

The focus of this paper is to determine the causes of specific discharge patient medication errors on the medical/surgical unit related to communication deficiencies and health literacy challenges. There is a clear connection between the high levels of morbidity and preventable hospital readmissions and the poor levels of patient medication adherence. This is directly attributable to a lack of patient engagement coupled with staffing shortages. The modification of verbal and/or written instructions for discharge education and medication is an evidence-based process shown to increase understanding and compliance of caregivers/discharge educators, and patients, as evidenced in many of the researchers’ peer-reviewed and published randomized controlled trials.

There are many patient education toolkits for nurses that include a discharge checklist, teach-back, health literacy communication tool, and simplified medication instructions. These toolkits also address health literacy challenges and will provide nursing staff with the framework to implement safety measures during the discharge process in determining if patients have been instructed on the medications they are to take.

The authors identified effective educational planning and design as a means of decreasing difficulties and instances of re-hospitalization. They attributed this to the use of the teach-back method and the demand for evidence-based communication. The teach-back method gives the healthcare provider the opportunity to correct the patient’s misunderstanding and the provider to identify the patient’s need for more explanation and to paraphrase the instructions the patient needs to articulate before leaving the healthcare facility.

Teach-back Strategies are included in the Patient Education Resources Toolkits and patient safety resources. This is especially crucial to the new patient because there is a risk that the new patient will become a repeat patient. The re-hospitalization of a patient should be reduced to the greatest extent possible, and within the limits of the healthcare system’s authority, the healthcare system should help the clinical staff manage their interactions with the patient and regulate the information transfer, all while maintaining the underlying priorities of the healthcare system.

Nurses need to evaluate whether a patient is non-compliant, non-patient, and/or non-literate. Non-literate patients must receive dedicated information and counseling intervention. The authors of the quasi-experimental study found that the implementation of a health literacy program by nurses allowed patients to understand information better, to make informed health-related decisions, and to comply better with the care plans. Data from the medical-surgical unit revealed that a lack of patient teaching resulted in the development of complicating conditions and noncompliance with discharge instructions and medication.

The study offers a health literacy checklist, a basic informing framework, and formal communication as illustrative solutions to the problem. At the bedside in the nursing profession, a variety of patient-teaching techniques will allow nurses to provide, evaluate, and support patient teaching about medication and self-care after discharge. If nurses are provided with structured teaching materials based on health literacy principles, the authors suggest that nurses will be better able to reduce the risks that patients may face as a result of an information and teaching gap, and improve health care for patients in the medical-surgical unit.

Teach-Back Communication and Discharge Education Practices

The study highlights the advantages of the teach-back technique for this operation. The technique was developed to bridge the gap between the information given to the patient and the patient’s comprehension of the information. Therefore, it helps prepare the patient for hospital discharge. The authors found that the teach-back technique was able to accomplish the same objectives as the authors’ controlled trial.

More specifically, the teach-back technique improved discharge readiness, comprehension of discharge instructions, and satisfaction of the patients with the discharge instructions. The findings of the study will be beneficial to medical-surgical units that have a discharge problem. Discharging patients without the knowledge of their medications can cause unwarranted consults and/or readmissions. The study shows that the communication strategy of giving information, asking patients to repeat the instructions, and providing more information and guidance to patients helps nurses to confirm that patients have adequate information.

It also helps nurses address the patients’ erroneous beliefs and, most importantly, helps the patients retain the information and avoid the information dump syndrome. The teach-back technique for patient information will also help nurses design patient information aids, tools, and guides that are safe and effective. A well-structured intervention framework that integrates risk factors and the teach-back method can help healthcare organizations mitigate patient safety risks, improve adherence to treatment plans, and optimize patient safety. The instruction on compliance during the key transitional phases, for example, relocating a patient from being housed in the hospital to being discharged, can lead to better patient outcomes and lower unnecessary returns to the hospital after discharge.

The researchers reported a decreased likelihood of hospital readmissions with the implementation of discharge preparation associated with the Teach-Back discharge method. In this study, Teach-Back discharge participants were better prepared for discharge and were more willing to assume responsibility for their self-care. This study noted that nurses reported frustration and burnout due to the lack of discharges and the resulting conversations. Poor patient education on the medical-surgical unit was associated with errors in the administration of medications and adherence, post-discharge complications, and readmissions.

This study recommends designing a Teach-Back Discharge Education Toolkit to assist nurses in the transition from care channeling to instructing step-by-step discharge instructions, checking understanding, and providing verbal prompts of the in-hospital patient care tasks to be performed by the patient, prior to discharge. These tools would aid nurses in structuring the required in-hospital care of the patient post-discharge and facilitate a safe discharge. This would assist hospital systems in enhancing the safe and quality care of the patient post-discharge and alleviate the concerns of medical-surgical unit nurses, sustaining patient education.

This article demonstrates the ability of healthcare practitioners to learn and integrate the teach-back technique into their practice during discharge education, which surpasses patient literacy. This study demonstrates the use of the train-the-trainer method to instill community health workers with the skills needed to communicate, engage, and provide quality discharge education. The authors of this study point out that the patient’s area of misunderstanding is also an area of research opportunity, and training staff has been shown to result in better patient understanding. This is particularly true for medical-surgical units in which the gaps and overlaps in the education of nursing staff have been associated with medication errors, failure to follow discharge instructions, and potentially avoidable readmissions.

The authors advocate for the implementation of a teach-back toolkit, for example, staff training, communication scripts, competency assessment, and follow-up training, to provide nurses with their first exposure to teach-back and assist with difficult discharge cases. Through the use of teach-back cases, this method can be implemented by healthcare units to enhance the quality of discharge education, decrease the risks associated with discharge, and improve the balance in the system with the aim of minimizing avoidable readmissions due to insufficient patient education.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Nursing Care Coordination

This article examines the barriers to patient education in hospital settings, particularly the discontinuity of nursing shift patterns, time constraints, and the modular patient education integrated within reality nursing. The authors of the cross-sectional study assert that the systemic barriers described above account for the absence of sustained and integrated patient education and the phenomena of medication errors, non-compliance with discharge instructions, and repeated admissions to the medical/surgical units. The findings further illustrate that the barriers are beyond the individual nursing practice to the barriers of collaboration and integrated systems supportive of patient education.

The authors propose the development of a modular patient education system comprised of standardized patient education tools and templates, shift intercommunication tools, interdisciplinary tools for discharge planning, and integrated patient education documentation tools. The patient education system will assist healthcare practitioners in addressing the obstacles of “disconnected communication,” thus promoting an integrated approach to communication and coordination during the discharge planning process. The patient education system will assist nurses in delivering quality patient education to address the identified safety concerns, thus elevating the quality of care rendered in the process.

The authors identified a crucial element for the successful functioning of any healthcare organization: interprofessional collaboration, which ultimately enhances the consistency and clarity of information provided to the patient. Findings of their meta-analysis suggest that IPE increases patients’ understanding of medication and their treatment plan, and improves the interaction between patients and health care professionals. The lack of coordination between patients and health care professionals is a major cause of confusion for patients; and leads to instructions that are contradictory or inconsistent, and increasing the risk of medication errors, noncompliance with discharge instructions, and complications that lead to readmissions from medical-surgical units.

The existing literature points to the necessity to consider patient education, not only a nursing issue, but also a concern of system-integrated communication and coordination of care. As a point of departure for communication in health care, interdisciplinary discharge planning checklists, an electronic shared documentation system, and structured/canonical education protocols and team-based communication systems should be utilized. These tools will give health care providers a unified message and will reinforce instructions to patients. This approach will ensure that health care professionals do not provide redundant or conflicting information during patient teaching. The ultimate goal of this approach is to provide patient-centered education that improves patient outcomes and decreases avoidable hospital readmissions.

The researchers noted that much of the “education” of patients during clinical practice depends on the health care provider’s health literacy knowledge and skills to convert that knowledge into a “communication to patients.” There is a clear correlation between CLS and greater competency of health care providers and better patient outcomes (improvement in knowledge of medicines, greater self-care options, and higher satisfaction levels of patients) seen in both of their cross-sectional studies, but a lower level of education is correlated with a low knowledge of diseases and low compliance with treatment. One of the reasons for medication errors, low follow-up with the patients after discharge from a care facility, problems, and/or preventable readmission cases is the poor (or absence of appropriate and continuous) patient education, which is a direct result of a significant difference in the medical-surgical units.

The results of the study show that patient education, along with the structured support system of health care providers, is sufficient to improve patient outcomes. A patient education tool kit should contain health literacy assessment tools, teaching patient care guidelines, and communication models for the interdisciplinary teams that provide the patient with the same information. The tools could allow health care providers to offer patient-centered care in a way that supports patient safety and self-management while decreasing unnecessary readmissions.

Standardized Tools, Technologies, and Safety Improvements

The tools detailed by the authors show that the effect of enhanced knowledge and clinical skills on self-assurance and safer and more efficient service provision improved patient care. A systematic review and meta-analysis indicate that, in the assessment of clinical performance, E-Learning, simulation, and mobile-based educational technologies positively influence the process. The implementation of systematic digital education may be directed toward the systematic evaluation and improvement of the information offered by health care workers. This could be applied in the surgical ward due to the inability to manage medication, failure to execute the discharge instructions, and complications and readmissions occurring because of the inconsistency and failure to implement the teach-back method.

The existing voids in patient information and system education may be bridged using technology that will create a simple, consistent, and automated system of discharge and medication teaching. The results should be used in online clinical education, interactive learning, simulation-based staff training, and mobile platforms for the immediate reinforcement of critical information to optimize the time availability of healthcare professionals. These apps will standardize the education to be offered by different nurses in differing shifts by lessening the inconsistency in education. A consumer healthcare organization can implement technology-based, standardized educational systems to improve patient literacy, care plan adherence, avoid needless complications, and lower hospital readmissions.

This paper argues that mobile educational applications are a flexible technology that can aid the education of nurses and improve their clinical practice communication with patients. Their results are based on a narrative review. They found that the mobile applications employed in their study provided nurses with tools that improved retention of knowledge and enhanced motivation, confidence, and flexible patient education resources. This model is most successful in medical-surgical nursing units because of the erratic patterns of nursing education in those units, many of which create a harmful gap in knowledge for the nursing unit, which causes medication errors, low rates of therapeutic discharge medications, adverse reactions, and preventable readmissions. This study also points to the potential of mobile applications to contain and control the range of education.

Mobile Applications can deliver the same educational content directly at the point of care, which guarantees that each patient is provided with the same information, regardless of shift changes and personnel variations. This evidence should be part of a toolkit resource that the EHS can use for mobile learning, integrated patient education modules, integrated patient education apps, integrated medication education apps, integrated discharge support apps, and others. For admission education, mobile applications can provide nurses with tools to conduct interactions of a more time-bound nature, while providing education that is more systematic, structured, and consistent. The use of mobile-based systems can help improve the safety of the patient education system in health care organizations by harnessing technology to improve communication, reduce safety concerns, and improve the patient’s understanding.

The study explored the role of digital technology in nursing education and the practice of nursing. It showed how digital technologies such as mobile apps, clinical decision support systems, and e-learning technologies can be used to communicate with patients and access data to aid clinical decision support in real time. Integrative reviews show how using digital resources enables nurses to teach patients in an organized manner at the location of patient care and to teach something timely, rather than using patient education resources in an arbitrary manner or from memory. On medical-surgical units, there tends to be a lack of or great disparity in teaching the patient, which results in, among other things, medication errors, no patient instruction, no adherence to discharge instructions, complications, and avoidable readmissions.

The results of the study view technology as a key strategy to improve and standardize patient-care education and not as a teaching tool for nurses. The study supports the use of clinical decision support systems, patient education mobile apps, electronic discharge information systems, and digital learning systems integrated into hospital information systems as an evidence-based resource for nurses to provide the appropriate educational interventions before and during the administration of medications and planning for patient discharge. Implementing technology to educate patients helps standardize patient learning and fosters understanding of patient care, general safety, and care practices.

Conclusion

To enhance patient education during discharge from the medical/surgical unit, the development of an evidence-based, structured, comprehensive discharge plan is necessary. Insufficient discharge education/teaching on numerous occasions is the driving force behind the need for systematic teaching and cross-disciplinary continuous evaluations of patients’ learning readiness prior to discharge. Designing, developing, and implementing patient-centered learning and teaching resources, along with patient engagement strategies and safer communication methods, is the responsibility of nursing. This collaborative care model is designed to transform both teaching and instructional resources and is anticipated to reduce negative patient outcomes and improve the safety and quality of care in medical-surgical units.