Quality Improvement in Nursing Assignment

Quality Improvement in Nursing Assignment
Course Project Milestone 3 Template
For Use SEPT 2018
Directions: Prior to completing this template, carefully review Course Project Milestone 3 Guidelines paying particular attention to how to name the document and all rubric requirements. After saving the document to your computer, type your answers directly on this template and save again. This assignment is due by Sunday end of Week 6 by 11:59 p.m. Mountain Time.
Your Name: __________________________
Assignment Criteria Answers:
NOTE: See Milestone 3 Rubric for details required in each area.
Brief Statement of Nursing Care Issue
15 points
Improve: Interventions (3) to Improve Quality
120 points
(40 points each for 3 interventions)
Intervention #1:
Intervention #2:
Intervention #3:
Improve: Professional Article to Support Interventions
75 points
(25 points reference and citation; 50 points summary)
Citation must be included with appropriate intervention above. Do NOT type in this box.
Reference:
Article Summary:
Control:
Control/
Evaluation
90 points
(30 points each for 3 evaluations)
Evaluation for Intervention #1:
Evaluation for Intervention #2:
Evaluation for Intervention #3:
NR392 Course Project Milestone 3 Template.docx 9/2018 CJM/VH 1
A method known as quality improvement is used by healthcare professionals to set goals for their businesses, such as decreasing patient falls or reducing opioid use following surgery.
But what exactly is quality improvement in healthcare?
“Quality improvement is a systematic strategy to improving the quality and safety of healthcare delivery that is guided by data,” stated Debra Sowell, DNP, RN clinical faculty in Southern New Hampshire University’s graduate nursing programs (SNHU).
“Quality improvement focuses on patient-centered treatment that is safe, timely, effective, efficient, and equitable.”
As medical institutions strive to increase efficiency, minimize healthcare costs, and ensure high-quality patient outcomes, improving healthcare quality and safety is becoming a rising emphasis for the nursing industry and healthcare systems as a whole.
Are you enthusiastic about healthcare safety and risk management?
Then you might want to learn more about quality improvement and what it takes to get started or advance in this rapidly increasing area.
What Is Quality Improvement and What Does It Entail?
Dr. Debra Sowell is in charge of the text.
Debra Sowell, Ph.D.
For many years, attempts to improve healthcare quality and safety centered on the individual responsibility of nurses and other medical personnel.
According to Sowell, quality improvement (QI) has made safety and quality a system priority.
“The “shame and blame” game, which used to focus on a single person, has now switched its focus to working environments and complex systems,” Sowell added.
“In the past, QI was limited to the detection of unfavorable events.
Even among the most dedicated doctors who practice the highest standards of care, human mistake is unavoidable today.”
Professionals in the field of quality improvement examine patient and other medical data as well as the processes that are utilized to provide treatment.
They use the data to find areas for improvement and to highlight areas of greatness, according to Sowell.
The purpose of this project is to enhance patient outcomes, increase medical care delivery efficiency, and lower healthcare expenditures.
The subject of quality improvement in healthcare has evolved dramatically in recent years as a result of technological advancements that incorporate medical data-informed decision making.
“The significance of technology cannot be overstated,” Sowell added.
“Manual audits and long hours spent scraping and digging for data were common in the past.
The amount of data we now have at our fingertips might be daunting.
Healthcare quality specialists collaborate with other members of the organization to make effective use of data.”
The way healthcare professionals use accessible data for improvement efforts varies by organization, resulting in a wide range of quality improvement projects in the healthcare industry.
What are some examples of healthcare quality improvement initiatives?
Quality improvement strategies include analyzing patient data to develop a plan to prevent surgical infections or using data-driven ways to reduce the average length of hospital stays, according to Sowell.
Other real-world effects of healthcare quality improvement, according to Sowell, include:
Medication-related side effects are being reduced.
The treatment of sepsis should be improved.
Infections in urinary catheters have decreased.
Reduction in the number of people who have to return to the hospital.
Errors in medicine delivery have decreased.
Documentation of electronic medical records has improved.
Improved inter-departmental coordination of care
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) produced a framework that defines six core goals for patient care, which is used to guide most examples of quality improvement in healthcare.
Patient care should be as follows, according to the framework:
Safe: Preventing patients from suffering injury throughout their medical care.
Effectiveness is defined as providing medical services to patients who can benefit from them while avoiding interventions that are unlikely to improve patient outcomes.
Timely: Reducing appointment and treatment wait times and delays.
Efficient: Using medical equipment, supplies, time, and energy efficiently.
Equitable: Assuring that patient variables such as gender, ethnicity, geography, and socioeconomic status have no bearing on the quality of care provided.
Respecting unique patient preferences and ensuring that patients are valued and included in choices affecting their care are all examples of patient-centered care.
Healthcare quality professionals can improve patient care outcomes and have a substantial impact on the healthcare industry as a whole by using this framework as a guide.
What is the Importance of Healthcare Quality Improvement?
When healthcare systems concentrate on quality improvement, they can affect major change within a medical facility, resulting in everything from cost savings to, most importantly, patient lives saved.
As the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated, a focus on quality improvement in healthcare can also better prepare an institution to handle a large-scale emergency or medical crisis.
When the epidemic was at its worst, medical systems all around the world employed data analysis and other quality-improvement techniques to change their care practices, reduce patient fatalities and ICU stays, keep more hospital beds open, and assure the safety of all patients and employees.
According to a 2021 study in The BMJ, a poll of 225 quality improvement specialists in the United Kingdom indicated that quality improvement methodologies were frequently implemented throughout the pandemic response.
Quality improvement was significant to 51% of respondents at COVID-19, according to the poll.
Another 49% said their organization’s use of improvement methodologies and approaches grew as a result of the pandemic.
“The importance of healthcare quality and safety has been underlined in recent ongoing health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, where healthcare workers were pushed to deliver exceptional, quality care while protecting themselves, patients, families, and the community,” Sowell added.
“Learning from these experiences to better prepare for future problem-solving possibilities is a challenge for healthcare quality and safety professionals.”
If you want to make a significant contribution to the future of patient care and safety, a career in healthcare quality improvement may be suitable for you.