New Article: "New Nurses Feel Unprepared to Focus on Quality Improvement"

NurseZone.com is featuring a new article by Debra Wood, RN, which focuses on the challenges new nurses face as they enter a health system which emphasizes quality improvement.

Although nursing administrators and other health care leaders have placed a strong emphasis on quality improvement, many new nurses enter the profession feeling "poorly" or "very poorly" prepared by their nursing education programs to implement quality improvement measures, according to new research findings. In fact, 12.6 percent reported never having heard of the widely-used term now at the forefront of health reform discussions.

Christine Kovner, PhD, RN, FAAN, said she was surprised by the number of new nurses who felt unprepared to participate in quality improvement initiatives."I see this as a wake-up call and a piece of evidence," said Christine Kovner, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, a professor at New York University's College of Nursing and lead author of a study published in the January 2010 issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety.

Click here to read the entire story.