Hospitals and Nurses Working in Acute Care Setting

How do hospitals ensure they are meeting the needs of vulnerable populations within the communities that they serve? What factors should be considered to ensure that nurses working in acute care settings meet the six Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Aims for Improving Healthcare Quality?
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The Institute of Medicine (IOM) created a framework that would ensure nurses working in acute care settings follow their guidelines. The framework comprises six factors, namely protection, efficacy, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable. Firstly, being safe means delivering health care that minimizes patient damage, including preventing injuries that can be avoided and eliminating medical errors. Secondly, care is given in consideration of scientific expertise to all those who could benefit from it and refrain from offering services to all who are unlikely to benefit from it. Timelines involve reducing the amount of time, which leads to harmful delays to both the recipients and the caregivers. Moreover, equitable health care does not vary because of personal position in society (Vest et al., 2017). More precisely, patient-centered means delivering care that is sensitive, quality, and respectful of the social, cultural aspects of individual patients, which guides clinical decisions.

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Hospitals and Nurses Working in Acute Care Setting