Anandam Sivamani
The National Kidney Foundation, Singapore
Title: Enhancing primary nurses awareness, responsibility and accountability through structured primary nurse checklist
Biography
Biography: Anandam Sivamani
Abstract
There is an increasing number of aging patients among hemodialysis population. This resulted in an increase in frequency of patient monitoring to ensure timely interventions and early referrals in providing a seamless delivery of care to our patients. There were variations in the way care was delivered among different dialysis centers. Gaps were identified in areas of staff awareness and accountability of patient care due to a lack of an effective primary nursing checklist. Primary nursing is a care delivery system that supports professional nursing practice. In primary nursing, a therapeutic relationship is established between a registered nurse, patient and his or her family. The purpose of the study is to improve nurse’s compliance for primary nursing responsibilities and to improve nurses’ awareness on primary nurse’s role. For the purpose of this study, a descriptive correlational design was used. Registered nurses and enrolled nurses with more than one-year experience in National Kidney Foundation participated in the study. A questionnaire was developed; focusing on nurses’ awareness on primary nursing responsibilities was distributed to all participants. In addition, data collected on nurses’ compliance on carrying out on primary nursing responsibilities by conducting cross audit in 7 dialysis centers. Root cause analysis revealed that there was lack of awareness and non-compliance among nurses due to a non-standard work flow and confusion among nurses related to various reasons. The findings showed that there were improvements in primary nurse’s compliance for primary nursing care from 58.7% to 76.6% and also nurses’ awareness on primary nurse role from 12% to 58%. This study showed that implementation of Primary Nurses Checklist help nurses to organize and prioritize his/her primary nursing responsibility and accountability thus enhancing patients’ continuity of care.