Qsen Competencies

QSEN Competencies

Americans are constantly seeing a healthcare system that is in dire need of improvement. Increasing patient safety, reducing medical and nursing errors and improving health care has been the goal but is a slow process. While the U.S. health care system is widely recognized as having some of the best hospitals, doctors, and nurses in the world who in turn offer the latest technology in almost every community the system is not efficient, nor does it deliver the improved health outcomes that are being realized in other industrialized nations (Department of Health and Hospitals Services, 2011). There have been countless of nursing and medical errors that have placed the safety of patients at risk because of paper based records. Utilizing electronic health records increase the likelihood that patients received life saving treatments, or lower the frequency of common type of hospital acquired infections (DHHS, 2011). Health professionals, using scientific evidence, need to be able to describe what constitutes good care, identify gaps between good care and the local care provided in their practices, and know what activities they could initiate, if necessary, to close any gaps (Cronenwett et al., 2007).

According to Cronenwett et al. (2007) states, "a series of national commissions have documented significant problems related to safety and quality in the US health care system. In light of these problems, reports from multiple national committees concluded that if health care is improve, providers need to be prepared with a different set of competencies than are developed in educational programs today" (p. 122). Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) address the challenge of preparing nurses with the competencies necessary to continuously improve the quality and safety of the health care systems in which they work (Cronenwett et al., 2007). This paper will discuss the QSEN Competencies of quality, safety and informatics with a title of 'Improving the healthcare system through the use of electronic health records (EHR)'.

References

Cronenwett, L., Sherwood, G., Barnesteiner, J., Disch, J., Johnson, J., Mitchell, P., ... Warren, J. (2007). Quality and safety education for nurses. Nursing Outlook, 55, 122-131.

Department of Health and Hospital Services. (2011). National strategy for improvement in health care . Retrieved from http://www.healthcare.gov/center/reports/nationalqualitystrategy032011.pdf