HEALTHCARE PROGRAM DESIGN 2

Healthcare Program Design

1. Tell us about a healthcare program, within your practice. What are the costs and projected
   outcomes of this program?
   I am a critical care nurse. I specialize in providing care to patients who are in hospital’s
   intensive care units. The patients are usually the most seriously ill and, therefore, in need of
   constant care. Many of the patients in these units end up dying for various reasons that include
   inadequate number of trained staff and lack of sufficient material resources (Haniffa et al.,
   2017). Another major factor that contributes to high mortality rate in intensive care units is
   lack of adherence to principles that govern critical care (Haniffa et al., 2017). As a result of
   ignorance about these principles or lack of strict adherence to them, nurses and doctors make
   many mistakes which sometimes result in the death of patients.
   The proposed program, therefore, seeks to have all critical care nurses and doctors go
   through a two week training program in basic intensive care practices. The program will cost
   around $100,000. This money will primarily be used in purchasing and preparing training
   materials and paying the trainers. If successful, projected outcomes of the program include
   lower ICU mortality rate, increase in the number of patients being discharged from ICU while
   alive, and reduced time between patient entry and discharge from ICU.
2. Who is your target population?

My target population comprises all patients who get admitted to our healthcare
facilities. These are usually patients in critical condition due to severe injuries or illnesses. The
program will, therefore, be for nurses and doctors taking care of such patients.

3. What is the role of the nurse in providing input for the design of this healthcare program?
   Can you provide examples?

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In designing the healthcare program, nurses can use their training and experience to
make the program more effective in achieving its objectives. In particular, nurses can use the
SBAR model to enhance the value of the training. In SBAR, S stands for Situation. It requires
that healthcare professionals familiarize themselves with the patient environment. B stands for
Background. It requires that nurses and physicians check the patient’s history, medical status,
and diagnosis. A stands for Assessment. It recommends careful analysis of the patient’s
condition and a determination of the best course of action to bring him/her to health. Lastly, R
stands for recommendation. As the name suggests, it calls on nurses and doctors to determine
what needs to be done and how fast (Duan et al., 2017). Thus, in this healthcare program, the
input of nurses in its design will be recommending best practices to be taught during the
training.

4. What is your role as an advocate for your target population for this healthcare program?
   Do you have input into design decisions? How else do you impact design?
   As an advocate seeking to improve outcomes of intensive care patients, my role will be
   to push for clear critical care guidelines and adoption of measures to ensure strict adherence to
   the guidelines. My input will be recommendation of best practices based on SBAR technique.
5. What is the role of the nurse in healthcare program implementation? How does this role
   vary between design and implementation of healthcare programs? Can you provide
   examples?
   The role of the nurse in the healthcare program implementation will be recording every
   important patient detail using the SBAR technique so that other nurses and doctors have an
   easy time following the recommended guidelines. This role is different from the design one

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because it involves taking action in actual care settings unlike the design one which is more
theoretical.

6. Who are the members of a healthcare team that you believe are most needed to implement
   a program? Can you explain why?
   The members of the healthcare team that are most needed in implementing the
   program are nurses and physicians. This is because they are the ones that primarily care for
   and treat patients in intensive care units.

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References

Duan, W., Meng, Q., Hao, G., Wei, S., & Shen, Y. (2017). Application and effect of SBAR
communication model in the application of clinical nursing teaching. Chinese Journal of
Practical Nursing, 33(30), 2380-2384.
Haniffa, R., Lubell, Y., Cooper, B. S., Mohanty, S., Alam, S., Karki, A., … & Schultz, M. J.
(2017). Impact of a structured ICU training programme in resource-limited settings in
Asia. PloS one, 12(3), e0173483.