Health Care Standards. Reasons why Standards are Vital

Health Care Standards
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Health Care Standards
Standards are imperative in every area of practice, more so in health-care delivery where decisions influence the health outcomes of people and their recovery process. According to the Society of Gastroenterology Nurses and Associates (2014), standards are statements that authoritatively describe the accountability and responsibilities of practitioners in the health-care industry. As such, standards play an important role to ensure that the correct procedures and requirements are followed during the delivery of care.
Reasons why Standards are Vital
Standards provide guidelines for practice which can be used in the evaluation of practitioners. According to Davis (2014), standards help health-care practitioners develop and evaluate their clinical competencies. The competency of a practitioner, nurses included, can only be evaluated if there are existing standards in which the minimum compliance can be determined. Specifically, nurses have a responsibility to inform policy, provide patient-centered care, and generally make improvement in the profession and as such, it is important that they evaluate their competencies on a regular basis (Fukada, 2018). However, putting this into practice requires more than just knowing what is expected. This is where standards come in because understanding them enables a practitioner to align the standards with their practice, making it possible to evaluate their level of competency. The delivery of care in the U.S. is dependent on the level of competency of the health-care practitioners, making standards important in ensuring that practitioners can remain competitive on a global scale.
Second, standards ensure that patients receive effective and consistent care. Health-care practitioners follow the requirements or statements provided by the standards, and as such, their approach to a certain condition is similar regardless of where the patient is receiving care. This is especially important, given that the U.S. health care is not universal and as such, some people have access to privately-funded care and others do not have access to the same. As indicated by Davis (2014), standards enable practitioners to be patient-centered in the delivery of care, and as such, regardless of the institution or medical plan that the patient is using, the care delivered to them will be almost uniform, by the health-care standards.
Third, standards help in ensuring patient safety, which is very paramount in the U.S. health-care delivery system. Davis (2014) reveal that standards ensure that health-care practitioners are accountable, especially when it comes to making decisions that affect the safety and health outcomes of patients, thereby ensuring that they make sound decisions. Knowing that they can be held accountable for their decisions, health-care practitioners will be more likely to avoid actions that can put the health of the patient at risk or expose them to any harm, physical or otherwise. On several occasions, health-care practitioners are sued for negligence and other malpractices, and courts use the standards provided in the health-care delivery system to determine whether the practitioners are liable or not. Thus, standards pl...