Development and implementation af a workshop to improve assessment - based nursing diagnoses by nurses at a private hospital

Abstract

Introduction and background “Assigning a nursing diagnosis based on a medical diagnosis skips several essential steps to optimal and safe patient care” (NANDA 2013). A nursing diagnosis provides a baseline for nursing interventions; therefore it is essential to improve the ability of nurses to formulate an assessment-based nursing diagnosis. The inadequacy of an assessment-based nursing diagnosis is due to the inability of nurses to assess patients correctly and critically, resulting in poor patient care. Purpose / Aim The study aims to develop and implement a workshop that will improve the ability of nurses to assess patient’s signs and symptoms, causative factors and problems in order to formulate an assessment-based nursing diagnosis. Methodology The study adopted a quantitative one group pre-test, post-test intervention design. Quantitative research personifies investigations where the relative data is examined in terms of numbers that may be quantified and summarized. Data was extracted from the pre-test and analysed, resulting in formulation of the workshop (intervention) which sought out to improve the ability of nurses in formulating assessment-based nursing diagnoses. A post-test was done directly after the workshop. Data was then extracted from the post-test and analysed. A comparison between the pre-test and post-test data yielded results of the study. Population and setting The setting for this study was at a Private Hospital in Gauteng, belonging to a large hospital group. The population i.e. registered nurses, were in permanent employment of a private hospital in Gauteng. Data analysis The researcher and the supervisor moderated, reviewed and interpreted the data extracted from the pre-test and the post-test, through descriptive statistics. A comparison between the pre-test and post-test results revealed the effectiveness of the workshop. Main findings As established earlier a proper nursing diagnosis means optimal, safe and quality nursing care. Thus, a nursing diagnosis is a judgement based on a comprehensive nursing assessment. The sole purpose of the study was to improve the ability of nurses in formulating an assessment-based nursing diagnosis in order to provide quality patient care. The main findings of the study, was that it was effective to an extent in improving the ability of nurses in formulating assessment-based nursing diagnosis from the pre-test to the post-test, confirming participants now understood the importance of assessment-based nursing diagnosis on patient care. Although there was significant improvement from the pre-test results to the post-test results, there was still a lack of proper formulation of an assessment-based nursing diagnosis. This was due to the fact that some nurses’ still lack knowledge as to what are normal values for example in regard to vital signs or blood results etc. It was also due to some of the nurses not having a good knowledge base of chemistry, anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology or pharmacology and clinical experience