Impact of the continuous improvement program in the clinical nursing recor

Abstract

The nursing records are the support of the care provided by the nurse to each one of those people that are assigned in his/her workday, apart from being a pivotal element in the continuity of care management and decision-making; therefore, they should fulfill certain requirements to promote continuity and safety of care. 

Objective: the purpose of this study was to determine the impact of the program of continuous improvement in nursing records.

Material and methods: this study was comparative, prospective and longitudinal, the sample was integrated by 225 nursing records; a nursing records appraisal sheet was used for data collection, which included eight critical variables; the maximum value reached was 8-point; this appraisal sheet was applied before and after of the continuous improvement program. The data analysis was performed by descriptive statistics with measures of central tendency and statistical inference with the Student’s t test for the related samples.

Results: the results showed statistically difference in patient identification data, the congruence between medical indications and drugs registration, patient assessment and nursing interventions with a value of p < 0.005.

Conclusions: to have an indicator for the nursing records procedure allows recognizing the opportunities for improving the quality of it.