One area in outpatient case management that needs improvement is access to patient records that will facilitate immediate and effective care. In this specialty, healthcare professionals are responsible for coordinating and implementing a patient’s care plan (Butts & Rich, 2018). This requires healthcare professionals to have access to patient’s information since different nurses may be responsible for providing care to a similar patient. One nursing theory that can be applied to this problem is the Nursing Process Discipline Theory that highlights the purpose of nursing which is to address the needs of the patient (Butts & Rich, 2018). However, if nurses have a challenge in accessing patient’s records, this may lead to poor decisions or medical errors that may lead to poor outcomes failing to address the patient’s needs. The purpose of nursing is achieved after a nurse discovers and meets the needs of patients.
Due to the role of healthcare professionals in this specialty, nurses should have adequate information about patients to achieve the goal of this theory (Butts & Rich, 2018). Another nursing theory that can be applied to address this problem is the Twenty-One Nursing Problems Theory that focuses on the patient’s needs and the role of nurses in identifying various problems through a problem analysis approach. This theory is the best to address this problem since its focus is on patients and the nursing practice (Drevenhorn, 2018). It also provides ten steps to identify the patient’s problems and eleven skills to develop a nursing care plan which is one of the roles of nurses in this specialty. The application of this theory will enhance healthcare delivery by identifying problems in nursing practice that may hinder the provision of quality healthcare services (Drevenhorn, 2018).
References
- Butts, J. B., & Rich, K. L. (2018). Philosophies and theories for advanced nursing practice. Burlington, Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
- Drevenhorn. E. (2018). A Proposed Middle-Range Theory of Nursing in Hypertension Care. International journal of hypertension, 2018, 2858253. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/2858253
