Key areas of concern in nursing work environment, are covered extensively, such as leadership, workload and productivity, all of which are front-page issues in practice, systems, and policy levels.

Building on the revolutionary Institute of Medicine reports To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm, Keeping Patients Safe lays out guidelines for improving patient safety by changing nurses' working conditions and demands. Licensed nurses and unlicensed nursing assistants are critical participants in our national effort to protect patients from health care errors. The nature of the activities nurses typically perform â€" monitoring patients, educating home caretakers, performing treatments, and rescuing patients who are in crisis â€" provides an indispensable resource in detecting and remedying error-producing defects in the U.S. health care system. During the past two decades, substantial changes have been made in the organization and delivery of health care â€" and consequently in the job description and work environment of nurses. As patients are increasingly cared for as outpatients, nurses in hospitals and nursing homes deal with greater severity of illness. Problems in management practices, employee deployment, work and workspace design, and the basic safety culture of health care organizations place patients at further risk. This newest edition in the groundbreaking Institute of Medicine Quality Chasm series discusses the key aspects of the work environment for nurses and reviews the potential improvements in working conditions that are likely to have an impact on patient safety.

"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/

Second in a series of publications from the Institute of Medicine's Quality of Health Care in America project Today's health care providers have more research findings and more technology available to them than ever before. Yet recent reports have raised serious doubts about the quality of health care in America. Crossing the Quality Chasm makes an urgent call for fundamental change to close the quality gap. This book recommends a sweeping redesign of the American health care system and provides overarching principles for specific direction for policymakers, health care leaders, clinicians, regulators, purchasers, and others. In this comprehensive volume the committee offers: A set of performance expectations for the 21st century health care system. A set of 10 new rules to guide patient-clinician relationships. A suggested organizing framework to better align the incentives inherent in payment and accountability with improvements in quality. Key steps to promote evidence-based practice and strengthen clinical information systems. Analyzing health care organizations as complex systems, Crossing the Quality Chasm also documents the causes of the quality gap, identifies current practices that impede quality care, and explores how systems approaches can be used to implement change.

Drawing on the universal values in health care, the second edition of Quality and Safety in Nursing continues to devote itself to the nursing community and explores their role in improving quality of care and patient safety. Edited by key members of the Quality and Safety Education for Nursing (QSEN) steering team, Quality and Safety in Nursing is divided into three sections. Itfirst looks at the national initiative for quality and safety and links it to its origins in the IOM report. The second section defines each of the six QSEN competencies as well as providing teaching and clinical application strategies, resources and current references. The final section now features redesigned chapters on implementing quality and safety across settings. New to this edition includes: Instructional and practice approaches including narrative pedagogy and integrating the competencies in simulation A new chapter exploring the application of clinical learning and the critical nature of inter-professional teamwork A revised chapter on the mirror of education and practice to better understand teaching approaches This ground-breaking unique text addresses the challenges of preparing future nurses with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) necessary to continuously improve the health care system in which they practice.

v. 1. Research findings -- v. 2. Concepts and methodology -- v. 3. Implementation issues -- v. 4. Programs, tools and products.

This comprehensive book organizes the components of quality and safety outcomes, within a framework developed by expert nurses. Such a framework is missing in existing books on quality and safety in health care, and the concepts of nursing and organizational outcomes are often overlooked. This book fills this gap by exploring and expanding the various features of the Quality Health Outcomes Model (QHOM) and its four main concepts of System, Client, Interventions, and Outcomes. Using a broad and comprehensive approach, the authors identify the most current empirical evidence and concepts in the nursing field to provide an up-to-date understanding of the QHOM’s four concepts and their interrelations. New concepts include (a) systems concepts of turbulence and complexity of workflow and use of the electronic health record to support clinical workflow; (b) client concepts of social determinants of health, health literacy, and chronicity; (c) intervention concepts of interprofessional practice, nursing care processes including unfinished care, and care coordination; (d) outcome concepts related to nursing and the organization in addition to patient outcomes that includes the patients’ experience. The ideas, approaches, and evidence are provided by a team of experienced researchers, practitioners, and leaders. The author team presents an updated, state-of-art view of how system, client, and interventions affect client, nurse, and organizational outcomes. This book will appeal to researchers, clinicians, and researchers interested in healthcare quality and in particular nurses and nursing students in administration, research, and practice.