QSEN essay
QSEN is a significant concept for nurses which aligns nursing education and nursing best practices while also guiding nurses to redesign the ‘What’ and ‘How’ to deliver nursing care (Committee on the Health Professions Education Summit, & Board on Health Care Services, 2003). It is, therefore, a concept that improves the quality and safety of care and represents a unified high standard of nursing care. The QSEN competencies include patient-centered care, evidence-based practice, teamwork and collaboration, safety, quality improvement, and informatics, which are critical in ensuring quality and safety standards (Brady, 2011). Every competency involves the necessary skills and knowledge base that nurses must have to deliver quality care.
For patient-centered care, a nurse ought to understand the diverse cultural, ethnic, and social backgrounds of patients and provide care with sensitivity and respect for the patient’s background as well as eliciting patient values, preferences, and needs (Brady, 2011).
In teamwork and collaboration, a nurse is expected to value the perspectives and expertise of other healthcare provides, respect the centrality of the patient, and acknowledge the unique attributes that members bring to a team (Brady, 2011). Working as a team is likely to ensure that patients enjoy quality care and safety.
Evidence-based practice requires that nurses demonstrate knowledge of basic scientific methods, participate in inappropriate data collection and appreciate strengths and weaknesses of scientific bases for practice while also being able to differentiate between clinical opinion from research (Brady, 2011).
Quality improvement competency requires that nurses seek information about outcomes of care, seek information about quality improvement projects, and value their own and others’ contributions to outcomes of care (Brady, 2011).
In safety, nurses are required to demonstrate effective use of technology and standardized practices, value the contributions of standardization, appreciate the cognitive, physical limits of human performances and use appropriate strategies to reduce reliance on memory (Brady, 2011).
Finally, informatics requires that nurses seek education about the management of information, being able to apply both technology and information management tools, and value technologies that support clinical decision-making error prevention (Brady, 2011).