Ensuring high-quality care is a key concern for professionals in the healthcare industry. Hospitals, clinics, and other care providers rely on best practices to deliver consistent quality care. It is when these processes or outcomes differ from those practiced by other professionals or those outlined as the standard practice that variation occurs. 

Generally speaking, variation plays a part in how well health care gets delivered. Reducing variation is often spoken about as a way to improve care and establish consistency. Individuals interested in pursuing a nursing career will likely be impacted by the processes and protocols within their field. Understanding how variation works and which protocols to follow allows them to deliver the appropriate care to patients in need. Here’s a closer look to help you uncover more about variations in healthcare! 

Correlating Variation with Quality in the Healthcare Industry

Variation can be defined as warranted and desirable in one case as well as unwarranted and potentially harmful in another. This all depends on the situation on hand and how treatment is offered to a patient in need of care. 

In the first case, variation can refer to when care is adjusted in order to better meet the health needs and preferences of a patient. In the latter, it occurs when patients are not treated in line with their specific needs—resulting in potentially harmful outcomes like increased morbidity or mortality. Understanding the difference as you complete your practical nursing training allows you to administer the proper care, serving communities in need more efficiently and effectively. 

It can be challenging to assess patients and determine the next course of action when they present complex symptoms and conditions. For this reason, having a standardized protocol that reduces unwarranted variation becomes essential, so much so that prioritizing this goal has become an essential characteristic of healthcare improvement.

Exploring Ways to Reduce Clinical Variation after Going to Nursing School

Standardization is a big part of reducing variation in the healthcare industry. That’s because standardizing processes can be a way to ensure effective communication and management, decreasing the risk involved in each case. That said, it’s important to adjust to the individual needs of patients when embracing a complete standardized approach. 

Anyone looking to become a practical nurse may also benefit from knowing how organizations can proactively improve the quality of their health care. In addition to relying on industry best practices, organizations can take steps to evaluate the effectiveness of these practices and develop ways to monitor how decisions are made when these protocols are not being followed. This way, a better understanding of how variation occurs can be generated and then relied on for future improvements. 

Analyzing How Data can Create Opportunities for Improvements

Analytical data is viewed as having a critical impact on improving the healthcare industry. When it comes to reducing variation, analytics can provide actionable insights that serve to guide healthcare providers better. This data can include a variety of information, such as re-admission and mortality rates as well as indicators on how well the facility adheres to industry best practices. 

Individuals interested in the nursing profession may be keen to know that incorporating data-driven changes requires communication and collaboration within medical leadership. By embracing this approach, data can then be used to generate internal discussions that seek to encourage optimization efforts. Ensuring that practitioners understand and work with data in this way can lead to sustainable change that ultimately improves the quality of care that patients receive. 

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Contact Discovery Community College for more information!