Scholarly Activities on Quality Improvement

Scholarly Activities on Quality Improvement
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Scholarly Activities on Quality Improvement
Today's increasingly changing healthcare environment requires medical professionals to engage in scholarly activities that can help them shape their nursing skills and advance their careers as they aim to provide quality healthcare services. Conferences, seminars, ground rounds, journal clubs, interdisciplinary committees, morbidity and mortality meetings, and quality improvement committees are some scholarly activities registered nurses and nursing students should participate in throughout their careers or studies.
Overview
The scholarly activity that I attended was a conference on hygiene and Hospital-acquired infections (HAI). The conference aimed at creating awareness of how to prevent HAIs through correct and frequent hand hygiene measures by all healthcare professionals and patients. The increased prevalence of the spread of HAIs, long-hospital stays, and high rates of hospital readmissions triggered this activity. The activity was intended for all hospital staff and patients. Hospital staff must understand that poor hygiene is the leading cause of HAIs. Therefore, they should take precautions to ensure quality service delivery. Patients also need to know hygiene practices for nurses to raise complaints whenever these practices are violated. The representatives from the emergency department, catering, and procurement within the healthcare industry also attended the conference. This activity benefited me because it helped me learn and understand the benefits of hand hygiene and its role in improving patient outcomes.
Problem
The problem this scholarly activity is designed to solve is the spread of HAIs, which contribute to longer hospital stays, repeated hospital readmissions, increased costs, lost wages, and in the worst-case scenario, death.
* More extended hospital stays: HAIs can lengthen the patient's stay and delay their recovery, making them even more likely to develop complications.
* Hospital readmissions: HAIs correlate with a high risk for hospital readmissions. This risk may increase when healthcare providers fail to conduct follow-up care (Hoffman et al., 2019). Readmissions increase the risk of adverse health outcomes, such as increased patient stress and higher mortality rates.
* Increased costs: Longer hospital stays translate to more treatment, which burdens patients, their families, and the government. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), HAIs cost billions of dollars annually.
* Lost wages: HAIs can delay recovery, preventing patients from returning to work. This may result in lost wages.
* Death: In extreme cases, HAIs can overwhelm the body’s defenses and become fatal (Emerson et al., 2012). The Alliance for Aging Research estimated that 99,000 people die annually from HAIs.
By participating in the conference, the nurse would acquire the necessary knowledge on maintaining a high ...