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Nursing Accreditation and Patient Safety

Thursday, 15 July 2010: 10:50 AM

Tin-An Chou
Department of Health Care Management, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan
Ching-I Teng, PhD
Department of Business Administration, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to understand the nursing accreditation system in Taiwan.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to see nursing accreditation is positively related to patient safety.

Purpose: Nursing accreditation is one distinctive nursing system in Taiwan which guides nurse development and recognizes nursing expertise. N1 (or N0) is the lowest and the N4 is the highest. Years of experience, book reviews, case analyses, case reports, and administrative projects are required from N1 to N4. Skills and ethics are also considered. However, previous studies have not completely investigated the influence of nursing accreditation. Thus this study examines if nursing accreditation (from N1 to N4) positively contributes to patient safety.

Methods: This study used a cross-sectional design and survey methods. This study recruited 458 nurses in two hospitals in Northern Taiwan. Six items measuring patient safety came from Teng et al. (2009). Regressions were used for examining if nursing accreditation impacts patient safety. Control variables were nurses’ age, education, and the average number of patients cared.

Results: Nursing accreditation (N1 as the lowest and N4 as the highest) positively related to patient safety (β = .09, p = .04) with one-tailed hypothesis testing.

Conclusion: This study revealed that nursing accreditation may have potential usage for patient safety improvement.Keywords: Patient safety, nursing accreditations, hospital nurses.
References
Teng, C.I., Dai, Y.T., Shyu, Y.I.L., Wong, M.K., Chu, T.L., Tsai, Y.H., 2009. Professional commitment, patient safety, and patient-perceived care quality. Journal of Nursing Scholarship 41 (3), 309-317.

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