Decision-Making Process, Communication Errors - Coursework Example

Patient Care Issues Affiliation Patient Care Issues Decision Making Process A practicing nurse faces immense areas where critical decision-making is necessary and of highest priority every day. In fact, the nurse as the cornerstone of patient care has a role to play in the decision making process for the sake of continuous improvement of patient care. In a hospital setting, a multidisciplinary team works together as team for improving the patient care. Such a team comprises of the nutritionist, physician, medical laboratory specialist, counsellor, pharmacists among others.

At one time, a decision have to be made regarding the care of the patient, the nurse has to chip in and act as the patient advocate through ensuring that the decision made is the best. Such reaction entails critical thinking. In addition, utilization of the nursing process aids the nurse in thinking and adopting priority steps for the sake of patient care. The nurse incorporates steeps of problem identification and assessment, coming up with goals and interventions to curb the problem, intervening and evaluating whether the goal were achieved to the best level.

The goals must be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. Proper decision-making improves the patient care, making it holistic and hence decreasing the hospital stay through quick recovery (Dowding & Thompson, 2013).Communication errorsCommunication errors in nursing arise when there is inappropriate handing over between shifts. In such case, there is a breakage in the continuity of care provided to the patients. There is fragmentation of care and decreased satisfaction to the patient.

The result is poor healing and over hospitalization leading to death. During reporting and handing over shifts, wrong information may be passed regarding certain patients. It has direct implications to the subsequent care. Wrong documentation impeaches the patient rights to have good care, and can lead to legal implications to the staff since it is a form of negligence. There is subsequent increase in the cost of care towards the patient side since he is receiving what he not supposed to receive (Zendejas, Ali, Huebner, & Farley, 2011).

ReferencesDowding, D., & Thompson, C. (2013). Measuring the quality of judgement and decision-making in nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 44, 49–57. Zendejas, B., Ali, S. M., Huebner, M., & Farley, D. R. (2011). Handing over patient care: Is it just the old broken telephone game? In Journal of Surgical Education (Vol. 68, pp. 465–471).