Nursing students as joint commission surveyors.

摘要

Quality patient care requires familiarity with the standards developed by the accrediting organiza-tion, the Joint Commission (TJC). The Joint Commission ensures that healthcare organizations provide safe, quality patient care through periodic surveys. Educating prospective nurses to provide this level of patient care is a key component of any nursing program and aligns with the mission of TJC. There is a direct correlation between poor or absent nursing care and an increased incidence of adverse events such as patient falls, pressure ulcers, and urinary tract infections, all of which are monitored by TJC.Because hospitals are no longer informed when surveyors will anive, hospitals must be prepared for a visit at all times. Survey readiness generally includes 4 major areas: (1) improvement of teams/staff to ensure continuous survey readiness, (2) a culture of safety with a focus on patient safety goals, (3) communication and staff education, and (4) patient care audits to evaluate care and services provided to individual patients to ensure that standards are met. Testimony provided by TJC to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing addressed many issues, including the responsibility of nursing education programs to reform and address the realities of the modern healthcare environment, the need for opportunities for nurses to develop leadership skills in order to create innovative solutions to patient care issues, and that nurse leadership in the design of patient care delivery models has the potential to improve efficiency and effectiveness in the healthcare system.