M.Cur. / The nursing service manager is responsible and accountable for ensuring quality health care in a nursing service. The principle of liability requires a formal quality improvement programme in the nursing service according to which a specific level of quality nursing can be maintained. It is therefore clearly evident that a quality improvement programme, objectively maintain and evaluate the quality of a service. Opportunities for improvement are identified, and a mechanism is provided for taking remedial steps to bring about and maintain improvement, The abovementioned is of utmost importance and implies a constant commitment to health care service of a high quality. The overall objective of this study is to formulate and describe guidelines for a quality improvement programme for the nursing service of a referral hospital in the Gauteng Province. This study is an explorative, descriptive, qualitative and contextual research aiming to investigate the perceptions of quality in nursing/midwifery which will facilitate the exploration and description of a value clarification on quality, by the chief professional nurses, senior professional nurses, administrative personnel and patients within the nursing service of the referral hospital in the Gauteng Province. Focus group interviews, naive sketches and interviews as methods of data gathering was conducted. A simple random sampling method was used. A total number of three focus group interviews were conducted: one with seven chief professional nurses, one with fourteen senior professional nurses and one with twelve administrative personnel using tape recordings with the written consent of the participants. Naive sketches were obtained from the same groups. An expert psychiatric nurse, with a master's degree in the field and whose daily activities involved interviewing of the psychiatric nursing students and psychiatric patients, conducted the focus group interviews. The researcher conducted thirty individual patient interviews. Trustworthiness in this research was done according to Guba's model (!!! Krefting, 1991:214-222). Data analysis was done according to Tesch's (1990, in Creswell, 1994:155) protocol. An external coder with expertise in the field of coding in qualitative data was utilised to analyse and categorize the data. The researcher and the independent coder had consensus discussions for the formulation of the main categories and sub categories. Consensus discussions were also conducted with the study leader. The results were quantified based on the number of respondents whose perception on quality had reference to the same categories. The structured coding was based on the principles of quality: structure, process and outcome. A description of the conceptual framework was developed from the data analysis and a literature study. This framework with its content and criteria serves as scientific and theoretical basis of the quality improvement programme and are based on the values/value clarification on quality of the different roleplayers in the nursing service. Fifteen belief statements/values were described from the value clarification. The guidelines for the quality improvement programme of the nursing service in the referral hospital were described, based on the eight steps of the quality assurance model of Laing and Nish (Booyens, 1998: 576). A description of values is the first step and from these values on quality in the nursing service, the formulation of management standards was deduced in conjunction with the conceptual framework and the nursing/midwifery practice standards of the Nursing Department of RAU. Lastly the evaluation, limitations, recommendations and conclusion of the study were done.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:2027 |
| Date | 06 February 2012 |
| Creators | Kearns, Irene Josephine |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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