THE IMPORTANCE OF COOPERATION BETWEEN NURSING AND CLINICAL MEDICAL LABORATORIES IN IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF HEALTH CARE
Keywords:
Clinical laboratories, cooperation, healthcare, nursing, quality medicine Laboratories have always been an indispensable and integral part of medicine, especially in its domain of clinical pathology. Clinical laboratories represent a joint effort of various health professionals in service to patients and the community. Cooperation of clinical laboratories with medical and nursing professions improves the quality of health care and promotes laboratory medicine and laboratory services among other health professions. Special attention must be given to newly employed health professionals. Their integration into clinical laboratories is time-consuming, hence the need for smoother transfer and cooperation with the educational institutions (Zima, 2017). The focus of this joint discussion is to review the importance and impact of cooperation between nursing and clinical medical laboratories on the quality of health care. It is pivotal to pay attention to this theme due to the constant emergence of new generation health professionals, which in turn challenges the existing models of education, training, and cooperation. Health care systems throughout the world share similar problems – shortage of health professionals and constantly evolving new technologies in medicine and health care. Furthermore, the recent global pandemic has also revealed and emphasized health care weaknesses and fragilities throughout the world (Strain & H. Ravalico, 2021).Abstract
Clinical laboratory tests play an important role in health care today. Laboratory tests are becoming a foundation of evidence-based health care and clinical decision-making. They influence 60-70% of the decisions in health care and account for 10-15% of total health care costs. However, laboratory medicine’s share of improved clinical outcomes is low, at only 1-2%. Thus, there is an urgent need for cooperation between nursing and clinical medical laboratories to improve the quality of health care. (Zima, 2017) Health care systems across the world need to provide safe, efficient, and high-quality health care for all citizens. Several efforts have been made to improve the performance of health care systems, but these have had limited success. While many stakeholders participate in and influence health care systems, the responsibility for health care quality and outcomes rests primarily with health care providers. However, the effectiveness of health care providers is often suboptimal. To improve this effectiveness, best practices have been identified where one clinical specialty uses laboratory medicine to significantly improve clinical outcomes. These innovative health care professionals have transformed the traditional standards of care to achieve exceptional outcomes that would not have been possible without the clinical laboratory. The key performance indicators (KPIs) for patients, payors, clinicians, and health systems all improved through the strategic engagement of laboratory medicine within the integrated clinical care teams. (Strain & H. Ravalico, 2021)
