I am a Charge Nurse at the Outpatient Dialysis Clinic, and my responsibility is to deliver quality care respectfully while remaining truthful about treatment plans and potential adverse effects. More particularly, I provide treatment, therapy, assessment, and education to 75 chronic dialysis patients continually. In other words, I have the experience of doing average nurse duties for dialysis patients and managing other nurses and technical staff. Regarding my working experience, I coordinated schedules for patient care staff in the Hemodialysis Unit, maximizing the efficiency of patient care. I also regularly educate and assess the patients on nutritional and fluid requirements to improve their quality of life. I consider encouraging patients to learn more about their diseases and appropriate treatment a vital part of my job. Hence I provide them with useful resources implying scholarly journals and websites such as Kidney Disease Education. There they can find information on diets, limitations during the treatment period, and other advice concerning their disease.
Considering the management side of my job, I oversee three nurses and nine technicians. As a manager, I should provide them with as many opportunities as possible regarding knowledge and experience. Thus, in addition to performing patient care tasks daily, I implement programs and plans for patient care to satisfy both employees and patients. For instance, I initiated the implementation of the program for Care Quality Improvement among the lower-level staff, which resulted in quality improvement at 4% during the first month.
Moreover, I am responsible for keeping Hepatitis B vaccinations up to date, so I provide the quality of dialysis procedures and the vaccination availability.
Regarding the pandemic’s influence on working routine, it revealed some problems the staff had to deal with. For example, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, people were scared to get infected in the clinic. No measures were implemented at that time, so I organized a disinfection that took place every 15 minutes and a separate entrance to the cabinet to minimize the flows of people. After that, the patients became more relaxed, and the risk of them missing the dialysis was decreased.
Patient care would constantly be improving along with other service-related spheres. One striking example of what I have learned in the educational program is the need for pandemic preparedness education. During the beginning of the pandemic, it was challenging to distinguish between flu, fluid overload, and COVID-19. However, through continuous education provided at Nurse’s my workplace, the staff, including herself, were educated on assessing the patient safely and thoroughly.
Seeing that many improvements and research are coming out to improve patient care, I decided to go back to school. In addition to having my Bachelor’s degree, I decided to go for a Master’s degree to learn more and improve my craft in nursing. Part of my decision to go for a Master’s degree was influenced by the appearance of numerous changes and evidence-based practices that come out every day to better patient care and outcomes.
Spreading of the coronavirus made me concerned about the lack of staff’s competencies regarding the treatment of patients during the pandemic. In order to start helping people as fast as possible, I insisted on my overseen staff, which is three nurses and nine techs, completing the courses provided by the clinic. Consequently, my team and I began taking action in treating people who had COVID-19 earlier than most staff in departments that do not specialize in infections.
In addition, I am constantly monitoring services that could be helpful for the patients outside the clinic. I recommend my patients the services that provide helpful information on their diseases, the recommended diet, activity limitations, and more to satisfy the patients’ interest and calm them down. I reviewed and assessed patient disease processes and adjusted treatment therapy based on results. Thus, the level of care provided by my overseen staff and me is high because it contributes to increasing patients’ level of comfort.
I find it vital to assess the qualification of her overseen staff personally. Hence, I do my best to provide the nurses and technicians with necessary information on symptoms and treatment patterns. After they learn the information, I examine them to ensure the quality of studying. Furthermore, I regularly research different topics related to kidney diseases treatment and provide my subordinate employees with up-to-date scientific resources. During my working experience, I observed staff activities and made recommendations to the supervisor for improvement in the quality and effectiveness of patient care. Therefore, I contribute to the improvement of the team’s general knowledge and performance rates.
My working performance is aimed at maximizing the effectiveness of my team on the way to reaching the highest possible level of care. Thus, I mentor new nurses and patient care technicians by educating them for signs and symptoms because it is crucial for me to estimate my overseen staff personally. Also, I reinforce P&P procedures and always give rationales and thorough explanations on why I do things in a certain way.
Currently, I participate in a team of Infection Control Management for Quality Improvement. More particularly, I assist in Infection Control audits on teammates every month. These audits aim to develop services related to health care avoiding the blame-free mechanism for changes in practice. My responsibility is to provide the conditions for a proper audit through good planning, effective performance, and informative feedback.
In addition to my participation in Infection Control Management, I develop recommendations for Infection Control improvement. The potential ways of Infection Control development are discussed monthly in DQI meetings, and my point of view plays a vital role in making decisions. These activities bring practical results to the clinic; for instance, the AFV and CVC infection rates decreased by 10% in the last quarter due to measures implemented for the Infection Control improvement.