Nursing, peer-reviewed concept analysis article. Understanding Concept Analysis

Nursing, Peer-Reviewed Concept Analysis Article
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Liu, Y., Avant, K., Aungsuroch, Y., Zhang, X. and Jiang, P. (2014). Patient outcomes in the field of nursing: A concept analysis. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 1(1), pp.69-74.
The provision of good and effective health care is one of the fundamental codes of ethics that guides the nurses and health care providers in the course of carrying out their duties. Nurses and health care institutions are evaluated and appraised regularly in consideration to their ability to provide care to the patients in a perfect and satisfactory manner and as a result patient outcomes serves as one of the key performance indicators in the nursing profession. Patient outcomes in nursing generally refer to the effective recovery or lack thereof observed or measured in a patient after the provision of care in the course of their treatment. The aforementioned definition on patient outcomes is however not exhaustive as there are various definitions of the same by different scholars and medical practitioners who have also written comprehensive articles on the same. Nonetheless, it is widely believed that the concept of patient outcomes can be attributed to the renowned nurse Florence Nightingale who on a thorough examination of the unsanitary conditions found in health care facilities at the time significantly improved the hygiene levels leading to a considerable decrease in the mortality rates. More so, her belief that highly trained nurses had a direct impact on patient outcomes was integral in the transformation of the nursing profession. The essay examines and analyzes the concept of patient outcomes as evidenced in the nursing profession using Liu et. al (2014) article on “Patient outcomes in the field of nursing: A concept analysis.” .
Understanding Concept Analysis
Concept analysis has been at the center of the development of most of the theories in nursing through the unification of the similarities and differences found in various concepts and the eventual identification of an operational definition of the unified concept. Nuopponen notes on the benefits of concept analysis and states “The purpose of concept analysis is to get rid of vagueness around a concept and to produce clarity with regards to concepts and terminology” (Nuopponen, 2010). The Walker and Avant method of concept analysis has been widely used to produce clarity regarding ambiguousness in nursing concepts with the aim of establishing a uniform operational definition. Examples of these nursing concepts that require uniformity in their understanding include concept of eHealth, patient advocacy and the concept of patient outcomes among others.
Concept of Patient Outcomes
The concept of patient outcomes has gained significant traction over the years with both private and public health care facilities using it as a central measure for the evaluation of quality health care, making clinical decisions and to establish improvement areas in health care provision. These benefits combined with the different definitions on patient outcomes have made the concept more ambiguous and complex to analyze. However, articles such as Patient outcomes in the fiel...