One of the American Nurses Association (ANA) Standards of Professional Practice is “Quality of Practice.” This standard highlights that “nursing practice is safe, effective, efficient, equitable, timely, and person-centered” (ANA, 2022). Every nurse is responsible for providing quality patient care by following the standards set forth by different organizations. According to ANA, nursing theory is detailed as “a creative and meticulous structuring of ideas that project a provisional, purposeful, and systematic view of phenomena” (ANA, 2022). Through systematic inquiry, whether in nursing research or practice, nurses can develop knowledge relevant to improving the care of patients. Quality of practice and nursing theory both focus on providing patients with efficient care. Therefore, applying nursing theory as a framework for the quality of practice makes sense.
Nursing Strategies
Four major concepts that are central to nursing theory include person, environment, health, and nursing. A person who receives nursing care and can consist of patients, groups, families, and communities (Kitson, 2018). The environment is defined as the internal and external settings that affect the person. It includes all positive or negative conditions that affect the patient. Moreover, it can include the physical environment, such as families, friends, and significant others, the setting of the hospital for where they go for their healthcare, and cultural influences. According to Kitson (2018), physical environment also contributes to the person-centered approach, which is essential to the quality of practice. Health involves the levels of well-being that the patient experiences. It is a dynamic life experience that implies continuous environmental adjustment to achieve maximum daily living potential. Nursing refers to the nurse’s professionalism, characteristics, and actions that provide care for the patient. The ultimate goal of nursing is to improve patient care.
Focusing on the concept of person, professional nurses make their practice person-centered. They are dedicated to the patient’s well-being, as well as to their families and the community in general. A person-centered care is the outcome for the patient, the nurse, and the goal, which involves the nurse and the patient working together (Kitson, 2018). This agrees with the quality of practice and supports it. Thus, making the nursing theory a suitable framework for the quality of practice. According to the quality of practice standards, a nurse has to provide effective, timely, and equitable practice. When nurses focus on the environment, they ensure that it provides the patients with the most qualified care. The physical environment also leads nursing theory to focus on person-centered approach (Kitson, 2018), which links the theory and the quality of practice. Nurses take all the internal and external factors that can affect the patient’s well-being, supporting the quality of practice in the nursing theory framework.
When nurses concentrate on the health component of the nursing theory, they also focus on the expression of the patient’s life process. They apply their best practices to improve patients’ health, which is also implied in the practice quality. Furthermore, the nurses use their professionalism and actions to provide patient care. Nursing is a form through which the practitioners give specialized assistance to patients to maximize their health potential (Kitson, 2018). Therefore, it supports the idea behind the quality of practice since it is similarly focused on the idea of providing effective, timely, and safe healthcare.
Conclusion
Overall, the components of nursing theory, such as a person, environment, nursing, and health, can all be applied to the quality of practice. Professional nurses can strategize the components, creating a framework for the quality of practice. Both theories focus on the patient’s health and well-being as their priorities. The nursing theory involves more components that all support the quality of practice. Essentially, they all are person-centered, and the nurses provide their best practices to reach that goal.
Reference
American Nurses Association (2022). Nursing excellence. Web.
Kitson, A. L. (2018). The fundamentals of care framework as a point-of-care nursing theory. Nursing Research 67(2), pp. 99-107.