Perspectives of a Clinical Nurse Specialist About Improving the Quality of Nursing Services

Abstract

Recent reports, including the Institute of Medicine's “To Err is Human: Building a Safer Healthcare System” and “Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21^st Century,” cite the need for sweeping redesign of the healthcare system for high-quality evidence-based safe healthcare. Nursing has enormous potential to improve healthcare, as it directly affects the quality of care delivered to patients. Nursing, as the front-line staff, is positioned to implement changes to improve quality nursing care to improve outcomes using assistance from other disciplines such as quality management. Opportunities exist for nursing and academic partnerships to examine nursing process measures to develop a framework and help operationalize the concept of quality nursing.

• healthcare quality
• nursing quality
• nursing process
• patient outcomes
• quality management

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susan Seitz

Susan Seitz is a clinical nurse specialist (CNS) in the operating room at Greenville Memorial Hospital, which is part of the Greenville Hospital System (GHS) in Greenville, SC. As a CNS she functions in the roles of clinical expert, researcher, collaborator, and educator, as well as departmental policy and procedure author. She earned her nursing diploma from Abington School of Nursing, Abington, PA, and her bachelor of science and master of science degrees in nursing from Gwynedd Mercy College, Gwynedd, PA, where she also completed a clinical nurse specialist program in gerontology along with her MSN. Seitz has 35 years of nursing experience in labor and delivery, OB/GYN clinic, outpatient and inpatient surgery, education, and performance improvement. In her nursing career she has held positions as staff nurse, charge nurse, quality improvement facilitator, adjunct professor, clinical nurse educator, and clinical nurse specialist. She is also a member of Sigma Theta Tau and is active in her professional organization, the Association of Perioperative Nurses, and holds offices at the local, state, and national level. Seitz can be reached by email at [email protected].