Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Nurse Champions For Medication Reconciliation: Making A Difference, Stacey Waters

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Background: Medication reconciliation creates a significant safety risk when patients transition from one care environment to another. This is especially true for older adults who may have multiple medications, poor health literacy, or multiple providers. During care transitions, collecting accurate information about previous medication regimens can be a challenge. If providers are unskilled at eliciting the needed information, discrepancies can result, leading to medication errors, poorer outcomes, or patient harm. These discrepancies, if unresolved, can follow the patient throughout hospitalization and back into the outpatient setting, leaving patients unable to manage their care at home safely.

Purpose: The objective …

Can We Talk? Bridging The Communication Gap Between Nurses And Providers, Jolie Wildinger

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Background: Effective communication is the key to successful relationships and improving patient care. Effective and efficient communication is also essential in producing a healthy self-confidence and knowledge base, which is needed by nurses and physicians who are providing daily care to patients.

Purpose: The purpose of this performance improvement project is to increase the communication competence and self-awareness of staff nurses during intraprofessional interactions with the healthcare providers.

Methods: A quasi-experimental quality improvement process that included a pre and post-survey alongside an educational program to arm nurses with information and communication techniques needed to help build relationships to foster effective …

Sharp Safety And Supply Containment In Procedural Areas, Ariel Wright

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

To improve safety in procedural areas, a Midwest hospital piloted supply and sharps counts to reduce both sharp injuries and patient retained supplies. Supply counts are a standard of practice for decades within surgical-operational departments. Despite improved standards within surgical-operational departments, safety measures within procedure areas are limited. With current recommendations for sharp and supply counts and reported sharp injuries in the procedural area, the need to develop and implement a supply count and sharp containment policy was evident. A four-week doctoral project was implemented within the electrophysiology studies (EP) procedural area. EP staff reported using non-standardized techniques to count …