Literature Sources for Nurse Administrators

Pramila Chaudhary

Nurse leaders today are assuming active role in planning, designing, managing, and organizing patient care delivery models in order to meet the challenges of mounting health care costs faced by health care settings. Department of Health and Human Services, through their Medicare Shared Savings Program, released a rule in 2011, to reward Account Care Organizations that lower healthcare cost and meet evidence-based quality performance parameters (Hajewski, 2014). A nurse administrator in healthcare setting is required to implement measures to find efficient ways of providing nursing care, safety, quality outcomes, and staff development. Planning care management based on evidence and research are within scope of nursing and the conceptual framework of management and leadership (Galganski, 2006). Nurse administrators today have access to many sources of financial and business literature regarding current trends in health care changes and its implication to leadership and management theory. Table -A below identifies five source journals and Table-B identifies ten literature sources for reference in advance clinical practice and planning care models best outcomes for patients. Nurse leaders are required to continually meet current demands of rising health care costs and must plan to implement value-based changes to provide the best patient care.

Table-A below shows management Journals for reference providing knowledge through peer reviewed articles on the web links on the site. Table-B below shows literature sources found to add current knowledge through blogs, news and peer reviewed articles compiled on the web links provided on the site. Interagency Council on Information Resources in Nursing (ICIRN) (ICIRN, 2014) gives a comprehensive guide to how resources can be applied to nursing practice depending on the need to research related practice articles.

Journal Resource

Usefulness in Practice

Journal Of Nursing Administration (JONA)

JONA is a journal for nursing leaders and administrators to be used as a guide for decisions in managing healthcare organization related to nursing, business and finance. Nurse leaders can also avail current news, blogs, and research relating to healthcare organizations from JONA, a peer-reviewed journal (JONA, 2014).

Nursing Management Journal

Nursing Management journal is a resource for nurse leaders with peer-reviewed articles that provide practical information, as well as legal and ethical guide to nursing practice. “Nursing Management provides regular features, columns, continuing education, staff development and education, and more.” (Nursing Management, 2014).

Nursing Administration Quarterly Journal

Nursing Administration Quarterly (NAQ) journal provides peer-reviewed articles that nursing administrators can use to answer nursing practice and management related questions. It is published 4 times per year (NAQ, 2014).

Nursing Economic$ Journal

Nursing Economic$ provides resources for nursing leadership in health care. “The journal supports nurse leaders and others who are responsible for directing nursing’s impact on health care cost and quality outcomes.” (Nurse Economics, 2014).

Nurse Leader (Bimonthly Journal)

Nurse Leader journal is a bimonthly journal and provides nurses with practical information like how to strive for magnet status of hospital and other management studies in organizational theory, and is a valuable reference for nurse leaders (Nurse Leader, 2014).

Table-A- Journal Sources

Literature Sources

Usefulness in Practice

American Nurses Association (ANA) Nursing world.

ANA is a professional Nursing organization promoting the rights of nurses, lobbying for nurses in the congress. ANA codes of ethics are used as guide to address nursing practice issues. ANA established a code of professional nursing and is a valuable source for ethics in nursing (ANA, 2014).

Journal of Advanced Nursing

The Journal of Advanced Nursing (JAN) is an international peer reviewed Journal.JAN is well known for research and scholarship advocacy, and for up to date news on quality standards. It is a source for nursing administrators for news, journals articles and current information for nursing, medicine, allied health, and pharmacy.

Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing. (2014). (Quarterly).

This online Journal from Sigma Theta Tau International is free for members and provides knowledge, systematic reviews, and articles useful for nursing practice, current quality and research information. Nursing administrators, nursing educators and public health care policy makers can use this information. STTI addresses current nursing and healthcare trends and issues in nursing and health care (STTI, 2014).

Lippincott ‘s Nursing Center.com

This site provides professional and clinical database for nursing administration practice and organizations including CE, nursing journals abstracts, certification and licensure guides, news updates, job opportunities, and RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication). (Nursingcenter.com, 2014).

The Joint Commission.

The Joint Commission is an independent organization and promotes safe patient care by accreditation for hospitals and other health organizations. Nursing administrators can use this source to guide hospital quality and practice standards (Joint Commission, 214)

Online Journal of Nursing Informatics

(OJNI)

As described in the information about the journal, OJNI provides knowledge regarding electronic documenting for managing health records and nursing care. OJNI can be used for reference and new and updated informatics news in nursing practice (OJNI, 2014).

Medscape Nurses web site

Medscape Nurses site includes Blogs, experts, and viewpoints; it also provides free newsletters alerts on clinical advances in nursing, and includes current information for education and clinical nursing practice (Medscape nurses, 2014).

American Journal of Nursing (AJN)

The American Journal of Nursing promotes high standards in nursing practice. It is peer reviewed and evidence-based, and presents professional issues faced by nurses. This is a useful site as it promotes nursing perspectives (AJN, 2014).

AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) is a resource from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and offers quality, safety, and evidence based research information (AHRQ, 2014). This site is useful to get current research and quality measures that are being studied and to get data on previous studies, useful for nursing practice as it relates to patient care (AHRQ, 2014).

Association of Operating Room Nursing

(AORN, 2014)

The AORN Journal and website is a resource for standards of operating room nursing with scholarly, evidence-based, peer-reviewed articles. The journal and website provide physiological, behavioral, patient safety. Information regarding research and quality improvement, and education can be obtained here. This journal provides valuable information and recommends standards of perioperative nursing(AORN, 2014).

Table –B – Literature Sources

The article in Journal of Nursing Administration, “Care Coordination: A Model for the Acute Care Hospital Setting” by Hajewski & Shirey (2014), addresses problem of fragmented care by physicians and multiple care providers resulting in increased health costs. The new care model is developed in response to healthcare reform legislation, which rewards accountable care organizations through a Shared Medicare Savings program, accounting for quality of care and reducing medical cost. The article provides valuable information to nursing administrators.

The article in Nursing Management journal by Hollingsworth et al., (2014), “Diving into data: Quantifying efficiency by improving patient flow” proposes care organizations to strive for quality and volume in keeping with current demands placed by Affordable Care Act. Hollingsworth et al., (2014) propose that hospitals must reduce admission delays, long waits, uncoordinated care, and discharge processes. The article proposes electronic debriefing of daily operations and bed status report to organizational leadership for more efficient outcomes.

The article in American Journal of Nursing by Wallis (2014-11), “CMS to Compensate Providers for Coordinating Care” discusses how nurse practioners may be compensated for services they already provide to chronically ill patients they care for. According to Wallis (2014), CMS establishes new policy to pay for coordination of care in management of multiple chronic health conditions. This policy is geared towards better access and quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries. The article also discusses patient centered care document and Shared Savings Program for long-term care management services. Nurse leaders may apply methods based on information from credible journals to improve care in an efficient manner.

The article, “Physician Practice Participation in Accountable Care Organizations: The Emergence of the Unicorn” by Shortell et al., (2014) analyses a study to evaluate participation of physicians and healthcare management processes to provide efficient care in Accountable care Organizations. Shortell et al., (2014) argue that the affordable care act expansion of coverage will not remain affordable over time, unless hospitals find a way to deliver care more efficiently and effectively.

Lewis et al., in their article found in the Cochrane Library database, discussed increasing demand for healthcare providers to reduce costs in surgical cases. Lewis et al., propose that studies did not reveal a clear difference between care provided by anesthesiologist and nurse anesthetist when it came to adverse patient outcomes like death. As healthcare expands in the Affordable Heath Care Act, hospitals are driven toward using nurse anesthetists in order to implement cost reducing measures (Lewis et al., 2014). Nursing leadership can use this study to relate to their facility.

Conclusion

In conclusion, nurse leaders and managers have access to current and credible literature from wide range of disciplines ranging from nursing, medicine, social sciences, business, finance, and research regarding evidence based practice and quality measures, and management and leadership topics, which is useful in planning and directing nursing care as well as implement changes on policies and procedures that need to be re evaluated. Nursing management includes direct care managers who are responsible for primary care, middle managers who are responsible for coordinating care between departments, and nurse executives who are responsible for directing care in a healthcare facility; reviewing the literature is equally valuable for all levels of management for guiding decisions based on current knowledge. Nurse educators and faculty uses literature review as a teaching strategy, and for professional development of graduating nurses. Searching databases like CINAHL and PubMed will provide a wide range of nursing practice and related discipline topics, in addition nurse administrators need to consider rising health care costs and new regulations to form partnership with government such as Shared Medicare Savings program pose new challenges for today’s nursing administrators.

References

AHRQ. (2014). About Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Retrieved from http://www.ahrq.gov/consumer/

American Journal of Nursing. (AJN). (2014). About the Journal. Retrieved from http://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/Pages/AbouttheJournal.aspx

American Nurses Association. (2014). About American Nurses Association. Retrieved from http://nursingworld.org/FunctionalMenuCategories/AboutANA

Association of Operating Room Nursing. (2014). About AORN. Retrieved from http://www.aornjournal.org

Essential Nursing Resources: for the Interagency Council on Information Resources in Nursing (ICIRN).. (n.d.) >The Free Library. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Essential+Nursing+Resources%3a+for+the+Interagency+ Council+on…-a0209535655

Galganski, C. J. (2006). Mapping the literature of nursing administration. Journal Of The Medical Library Association, 94E-87-E-91.

Hajewski, C. (2014-11). Care coordination: a model for the acute care hospital setting. The Journal of nursing administration, 44(11), 577585.doi:10.1097/NNA.0000000000000129

Hollingsworth Forbes III, T., Crickmore Osborne, K., Hartsell, K. C., & Wall, B. (2014). Diving into data: Quantifying efficiency by improving patient flow. Nursing Management, 45(7), 18-25. doi:10.1097/01.NUMA.0000451031.54092.2c

Joint Commission Resources. (2014) About Joint Commission. Retrieved from http://www.jointcommission.org/about_us/about_the_joint_commission_main.aspx

Journal of Nursing Administration (JONA). (2014). About the journal. Retrieved from http://journals.lww.com/jonajournal/pages/aboutthejournal.aspx

Lewis SR, Nicholson A, Smith AF, Alderson P. Physician anaesthetists versus non-physician providers of anaesthesia for surgical patients. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2014, Issue 7. Art. No.: CD010357. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD010357.pub2.

Lippincott ‘s Nursing Center.com (2014). About the Journal. Retrieved from http://nursingcenter.com

Medscape Nurses. (2014). About Medscape Nurses. Retrieved from http://www.medscape.com/nurses/resource

Nurse Leader. (2014). About the journal. Retrieved from http://www.nurseleader.com/content/aims

Nursing Management (NM). (2014). About the Publication. Retrieved from

http://journals.lww.com/nursingmanagement/Pages/aboutthepublication.aspx

Nursing Economic$. (2014). The Journal for Healthcare leaders. About the journal. Retrieved from http://www.nursingeconomics.net/cgi-bin/WebObjects/NECJournal

Online Journal of Nursing Informatics. (OJNI). (2014). About the Journal. Retrieved from http://www.ojni.org

Shortell, S. M., McClellan, S. R., Ramsay, P. P., Casalino, L. P., Ryan, A. M., & Copeland, K. R. (2014). Physician Practice Participation in Accountable Care Organizations: The Emergence of the Unicorn. Health Services Research, 49(5), 1519-1536. doi:10.1111/1475-6773.1216

The American Journal of Nursing (AJN). (2014). About the journal. Retrieved from http://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/Pages/AbouttheJournal.aspx

The Journal of Advanced Nursing (JAN). (2014). Overview of the journal. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)13652648/homepage/ProductInfor mation.html

Wallis, L. (2014-11). CMS to Compensate Providers for Coordinating Care. The American journal of nursing, 114(11), 16.doi:10.1097/01.NAJ.0000456414.33785.23

Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing. (2014). (Quarterly). SSTI Journals. About SSTI. Retrieved from http://www.nursingsociety.org/Publications/Pages/Journals.aspx

Wolters Kluwer Health and Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. (2014). Retrieved from http://journals.lww.com/pages/default.aspx