Nursing characteristics and patients’ outcomes: a retrospective study
Improving the quality of health care is an increasingly important goal in the National Health Care system. Quality of care can be determined by patients’ outcomes. It is important as an improvement of patients’ outcomes that are related to receiving better health care, improving efficiency of car...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Asian Journal of Medical and Health Research (AJMHR)
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://irep.iium.edu.my/51685/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/51685/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/51685/1/AJMHR-Khin_Thandar_Aung.pdf |
| Summary: | Improving the quality of health care is an increasingly important goal in the National Health
Care system. Quality of care can be determined by patients’ outcomes. It is important as an
improvement of patients’ outcomes that are related to receiving better health care, improving
efficiency of care, cutting down the cost of health expenses and lastly decreasing mortality
rate. Pressure ulcers have a detrimental effect on patient health and well-being and as well as
medication errors that are placed as an important measurement tool for patients’ outcomes. It
is important to identify patients’ outcomes as to differentiate critical thinking and problem
solving skills of nurses from different educational and working experience background. The
aim of this study was to investigate the nurses’ characteristics and patients’ outcomes in
medical and surgical wards. This is a retrospective, descriptive study involving nurses and
patients who had been hospitalized in medical and surgical wards at Hospital Tengku
Ampuan Afzan (HTAA) Kuantan, Pahang. Nursing characteristics and data would be
extracted from existing database within the institution for 1 year of the period to determine
patients' outcomes and nursing characteristics. Descriptive statistic and chi-square test using
PASW Statistic Version 19.0 were used as data analysis. The results obtained showed that
majority of nurses in medical and surgical wards was having diploma (79.2%) and having
working experience less than 5 years (62.5%). Meanwhile the total prevalence of Hospitalacquired
Pressure Ulcer (HAPU) among non-ambulatory patients in medical and surgical
wards was 19.93% and the total prevalence of medication errors in medical and surgical
wards was 25.69%. There was no association between non-ambulatory patients and Hospitalacquired
Pressure Ulcer (HAPU) (p>0.05). As nurses are important to play central role in
providing the best quality of care, the nurse must be provided with an essential knowledge
and practice to be able to cure the patients holistically with an ability in planning the correct
and appropriate intervention immediately.
Keywords: Nursing characteristics, Patients' Outcomes, Pressure ulcers, Medication errors |
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