Operational Connection Between Quality and Strategic Planning: Nursing Management.

Abstract

 Quality improvement and strategic planning have become a nexus of knowledge that has influenced both the nursing management and the practice landscape in this changing healthcare environment. This article examines the functional dynamics of two important pieces in a chain how a strategic approach leads to a quality culture, patient safety and outcome, and the success of a nursing setting and the nurse. Nursing management plays a pivotal role in the provision of high-quality patient care. While strategic planning helps ensure comprehensive goals are met, quality improvement aims to upgrade processes and outcomes for care as part of the whole package of processes. In this paper we explore nursing as a systematic discipline with its own needs, goals and characteristics. They should work together in unison for solving the problems of contemporary health care systems (Huber, 2018). Strategic planning in nursing management contributes to high-quality initiatives, improving patient management, efficiency, and system performance (Huber, 2018). Strategic planning is a structured process that defines the current vision, mission, and goals of an organization, and the action plan to get there. Within the framework of nursing management, this process involves evaluating the existing state of nursing services, determining deficiencies, and forecasting the new challenges and opportunities (Yoder-Wise, 2019). A proper implementation of a strategic plan can help nursing departments to match the activities to be conducted to the general goals of the healthcare institution which promotes an efficient and effective working in the organization. Quality Improvement in Nursing. Nursing care is quality as it meets or enhances the patient's needs, results in better health outcome, and also guarantees patient safety. QI initiatives aim to diagnose and alleviate shortfalls in care through research as well as repeated measurement (Institute of Medicine, 2001). Two well-established frameworks are: (1) Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle; and (2) Six Sigma which are widely adopted in the nursing practice in order to achieve systematic improvement. Quality and Strategic Planning: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Association. There is a mutual relationship between quality and strategic planning. To implement the required planning and resources in order to carry out quality initiatives, strategic planning gives the direction and resources needed to put quality programs in place, while quality improvement is the process of achieving strategic goals through measurable outcomes.