Improving the quality of nursing care in Austria: 10 years of success

Abstract

Aims We provide more updated and comprehensive insights, including descriptions of changes that have taken place in the quality of pressure injury care provided in hospitals over a 10‐year period. Background Various nursing quality measurements do not present a comprehensive view on nursing‐sensitive quality indicators or place a focus on one specific care problem. Methods It is a repeated cross‐sectional multicentre study conducted annually on 1 day including comprehensive data regarding nursing‐sensitive care problems and quality indicators on the structure, process and outcome levels. Results The prevalence of pressure injuries decreased over the years from 4.4% to 2.9%, and the frequency of interventions increased. Conclusion The Nursing Quality Measurement 2.0 initiative shows considerable improvements over a 10‐year period. Therefore, the maintenance of such nursing databases should be treated as a prerequisite to providing high‐quality nursing care and safe nursing practice. One main benefit of creating and maintaining such databases is that allow users to screen for improvements, for example in pressure injury care. These observations can be used to develop marketing strategies and/or to empower and engage nursing staff. Implications for Nursing Management Participation in such quality measurements allows the comparison of data collected in wards and institutions in many different countries, enabling them to set appropriate benchmarks. Furthermore, the results can be compared over a period of time, highlighting systematic changes, trends or improvements (e.g., due to implemented innovations).

The experience of Catalonia measuring nurse‐sensitive indicators: Trends study 2012–2018

“…Rate of falls in hospitalized patients represents a common and persistent problem influenced by different aspects, nursing care being one of them. As has been argued, measurement of nursing‐sensitive outcomes in hospital setting allows to identify their relationship with nursing staffing levels which would help to explain differences between hospitals, as well as between units levels, in Catalonia health care system (Eglseer et al., 2020; Milstein & Schreyoegg, 2020).…”

“…Evaluation is a milestone in management; ongoing evaluation must be performed on the outcomes in relation to structures, processes, nursing‐sensitive indicators and stakeholder responses. For instance, in the current context of lack of nurses, evidenced even more due to the COVID‐19 pandemic, nursing‐sensitive indicators allow to demonstrate the impact of nursing practice on patient outcomes comparing trends, improvements as well as implemented innovations (Eglseer et al., 2020). One of the challenges for the near future for nurse leaders and managers is to estimate the cost associates with nursing care besides use the results of evaluation analysis to make or recommend changes to policies and procedures as needed.…”

Obesity and its associated factors in older nursing home residents in three European countries—Secondary data analyses from the “International Prevalence Measurement of Care Quality”

“…This includes data from hospitals and nursing homes. The study design has been described elsewhere (Eglseer et al, 2020; van Nie‐Visser et al, 2013). Only nursing home data are included in the current paper.…”

Identifying nursing sensitive indicators from electronic health records in acute cardiac care―Towards intelligent automated assessment of care quality

“…The use of nursing‐sensitive indicators can help build a foundation to quantify, measure and improve dynamic nursing care quality within all domains of nursing (Afanef et al, 2021 ). In fact, systematic assessment of quality based on nursing‐sensitive indicators have shown to improve the quality of nursing care (Elgseer et al, 2021 ). For example, nurse‐to‐patient ratios in acute care have been proven to influence a variety of patient outcomes, such as mortality, providing valuable information when constructing optimal staffing models (Driscoll et al, 2018 ).…”

“…Additionally, information needs vary between different actors and settings in health care, such as professionals, units and work shifts, creating a need for tailored and dynamic information systems, which respond to different users' individual needs (Peltonen et al, 2019 ). From a nurse's standpoint, providing requisite data entries for quality assessment generally increases documentation time and results in a need to make duplicate entries to differing documentation systems (Elgseer et al, 2021 ).…”