Journal of Modern Medical

Dear Editor
The position of nurses in accreditation programs has always received attention from researchers [1]. Considering the holding of several accreditation programs in hospitals and since nurses play a fundamental role in patient safety and quality of care [2], they should have an effective role in the accreditation programs, which has been mentioned in the studies. With a comprehensive review of these studies, the authors extracted six basic roles of nurses in the hospital accreditation process: 
• Management of the accreditation process regarding the development of health-related policies.
• Documenting and auditing.
• Creating inter-professional collaborations and interactions during and after the accreditation process.
• Training and empowering employees
• Dissemination of the quality improvement culture.
• Maintaining accreditation after its obtainment.
Nurses play an essential role in the accreditation process, and the majority of studies have mentioned it and acknowledged that nurses were present in the accreditation process at all strategic and operational decisive moments [3, 4]. One of the prominent roles of nurses was their managerial ability in hospital accreditation programs. Nursing has been mentioned as a complex job. In addition to providing direct patient care, nurses can have a productive presence in management positions. Because of their learned managerial ability, nurses can play an important role in creating, maintaining and developing health-related policies [4]. They are considered to be the main consumers of information obtained from accreditation programs for improving the quality of patient care. In this regard, they play an important role in documenting and medical audit in hospitals. They spend a lot of time in obtaining the necessary information in this field such that it has sometimes led to a reduction in their time for interacting and caring for patients [5]. This issue has been considered one of the important challenges of nurses. They have admitted that some of the information required by the developed standards is redundant and needs revision in the accreditation process [6]. Another important role of nurses in the hospital accreditation process is to create effective interprofessional collaborations and interactions. Establishing mutual relations and interactions among employees has been introduced as a method for improving the quality of patient care by nurses [7]. The nurses can achieve quality results by creating interprofessional collaborations, teamwork, team participation, and supporting the participation of other nurses and employees [8]. Accreditation is considered an important educational strategy; by meeting the educational needs of employees in an organization, the alignment of organizational goals can be achieved. Nurses can play an important role in teaching the necessary skills in this field [9]. Having a suitable quality improvement culture is one of the important requirements mentioned in the hospital accreditation process [4]. The role of nurses in the hospital accreditation process is more obvious than that of other members of the healthcare team; according to the nurses’ perceptions, doctors and other members of the healthcare team play a passive role in the accreditation process [6]. This is a point worth pondering. Since one of the important obstacles in achieving quality improvement is the unwillingness to participate in such activities, it is necessary to achieve an effective organizational culture in this field. Nurses play an important role in this field [10]. Maintaining accreditation after obtaining it is also one of the roles that can be defined for nurses. In addition to participating in accepting and creating the required changes in the accreditation process, the participation of the health care team, especially nurses, in maintaining the made changes is also important to improve quality [11].
According to the mentioned materials, it seems that nurses play multiple and key roles in the hospital accreditation process and in improving the quality of care. The roles of nurses in the accreditation process range from managerial to executive roles, which shows the high ability of nurses to participate in the processes of quality improvement. Although nurses have accepted the accreditation process and are making significant efforts to achieve the set goals, the relevant officials should also pay special attention to their challenges in this field.


References

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