Preparing Nurse Leaders in Nursing Professional Development: Quality Improvement in Nursing Professional Development

In lieu of an abstract, here is the article\u27s first paragraph: Quality improvement is an organized approach that uses data to analyze performance and monitor efforts to improve performance and outcomes. This is accomplished through the use of quality improvement methods to design and test changes to improve quality (American Academy of Family Physicians, n.d.; Quality and Safety Education for Nurses, n.d.). Quality improvement is not just the job of the quality department team. Nursing professional development (NPD) leaders are also responsible for quality improvement internal and external to their department. The NPD leader and team begin by assessing the current quality of the NPD department and its operations. Beyond simply providing educational programs, the NPD department must play a significant role in achieving organizational outcomes. If the department cannot validate its quality improvement plan and articulate its contributions to the organization, its stakeholders and its learners may be adversely affected. The NPD team\u27s continuous attention to quality improvement is vital and “systematically enhances the quality and effectiveness of nursing professional development practice” (Harper & Maloney, 2016, p. 47)