Nursing organizations, practitioners, and employers must combine their efforts to create desirable working environments. When nurses practice in quality workplaces, it becomes easier for them to offer superior health services to different patients. This discussion explores the issues revolving around the nature and quality of practice environments.
Personal Practice Environment
The presented Quality Practice Environments (QPE) Checklist offers meaningful insights that can be used to create effective working environments. Personally, I believe that I have been practicing in an environment that fulfills most of the attributes outlined in the document. To begin with, the working environment is supported by the institution in an attempt to promote lifelong learning and acquisition of evidence-based concepts that can improve patient outcomes. The issue of nursing leadership is also taken seriously. The rationale for this argument is that nurse leaders are supported and equipped with adequate resources (“Quality practice environments,” n. d.). There are also experienced practitioners who support and empower newly-recruited nurses. Additionally, nurses have authority and responsibility for practice. They are required to engage in policymaking processes. Practitioners collaborate with different professionals to achieve their goals.
The organization supports every nursing or care delivery model using adequate policies, mission and vision statements, and practices. The leaders in the institution embrace nurses’ insights and ideas, promote work-life balance programs, and implement powerful strategies to address personal concerns. The current challenge that affects the effectiveness of this working environment is the issue of workload management (Reed, 2017). The problem of nursing shortage explains why the institution is yet to hire more competent practitioners to offer evidence-based care to different patients.
Rationale and Recommendations
The above discussion reveals that most of the nurses in the unit are empowered to deliver quality services to their patients. The institution’s ability to focus on practitioners’ needs and concerns is a positive indicator of a desirable working environment. Work-life balance, lifelong learning, and provision of adequate resources are some of the practices that make the environment appropriate for the delivery of quality patient services (“Quality practice environments,” n. d.). However, my unit lacks adequate professionals and nurses to meet the needs of its patients. Some nurses are also forced to work overtime due to the problem of nursing shortage. Additionally, the unit lacks an effective mechanism to discuss or plan patient care with the targeted beneficiaries.
The current gaps can be addressed using evidence-based approaches. The first one is that the institution should hire more nurses or nurse aids to support every care delivery process. Units should also be guided to liaise with patients to develop appropriate care delivery plans (Reed, 2017). Finally, various concepts such as work-life balance and lifelong learning should be supported to meet the needs of more practitioners.
Conclusion
Organizational leaders in healthcare institutions must use their competencies to collaborate with different stakeholders such as practitioners, physicians, and patients to design the most appropriate practice environments. The above QPE Checklist should be used to inform any form of change aimed at improving the welfare of nurse practitioners. These questions should, therefore, be taken seriously whenever using the QPE Checklist:
- How can practitioners contribute to the development of quality practice environment using the QPE Checklist?
- What new issues or concerns should be added to the document to improve the working conditions of different practitioners?
- How can organizations combine various concepts such as “magnet status” and “meaningful use” with the attributes described in the document?
References
Quality practice environments. (n. d.). Web.
Reed, P. (2017). Translating nursing philosophy for practice and healthcare policy. Nursing Science Quarterly, 30(3), 1-12. Web.