Nursing

Quality Improvement Proposal

Honors Students: Complete this assignment according to the directions provided in the “Honors Addendum,” located in Course Materials.

The purpose of this assignment is to develop a proposal for a quality improvement plan to improve future patient safety.

Assume that you have recently been hired as the special assistant to the chief executive officer (CEO) of your health care organization, Thunder Hospital. Your duty is to head up the new quality improvement department. Over the last year, the hospital has experienced substantial growth but is also facing a number of patient safety concerns, including a steady increase in medical errors and a 25% rise in hospital-acquired infections. Based upon what you have learned in this course, prepare a quality improvement plan to present to the CEO with strategies for addressing these issues.

In a 1,000-1,250-word proposal, include the following:

Identify the issues the hospital is currently facing and how these issues are affecting quality outcomes and endangering patients.
Present a detailed plan to improve quality and elaborate on how it aligns with the hospital’s initiatives to improve value-added health care. Discuss the quality improvement tool you suggest using to locate and ameliorate problem areas, as well as the roles and responsibilities of involved stakeholders, financial considerations for the implementation of your proposal, the goals of the plan, and methods for evaluating its success.
Examine the effects that the implementation of this proposal will have upon administrators, clinicians, and physicians. Explore possible challenges that could arise with stakeholders reacting negatively to changes presented by this proposed plan. What strategies or preventive measures could be put in place to reduce the friction between various health care providers?
How will your plan improve overall quality for Thunder Hospital? How will the improvements your plan suggests implementing now set the hospital up to continue providing quality care in the future?
Cite at least four references, including the textbook.

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.

ANSWER

Quality Improvement Proposal

After recently being hired as the special assistant to the chief executive officer at Thunder Hospital, it is my role to plan the quality improvement to improve the safety of the patients in the future. Over the last year, the hospital has encountered substantial growth and development but has also faced several challenges linked to the safety of the patient such as medical errors and an increase in the number of hospital infections. Therefore, to assess and solve the issues, it is important to strategize on the quality improvement for patient safety within the hospital.

A careful review of the quality report demonstrated that Thunder Hospital is currently encountering two major issues. First, the company is facing medical errors specifically surgical errors. The health care conditions in the hospital have not been as safe as they should be. A substantial body of evidence has indicated that medical errors especially surgical errors have been the leading cause of injury and death (Rodziewicz and Hipskind, 2020). There are very many common surgical errors such as cutting a nerve while carrying out the surgery, cutting the wrong location, making anesthesia errors, or leaving an instrument in the body. For instance, due to inadequate planning and improper training, utilizing the wrong surgical tools These types of errors have resulted in minor and major injuries that may lead to death. Research has indicated that thousands of individuals are experiencing surgical errors that are resulting in death. Injuries from surgical errors can be severe and may require lifelong treatment and care. Additionally, the experience may be emotionally traumatic for the family and the patient. Considerably, such cases may lead to wrongful lawsuits where the doctors lose their licenses and hospitals are shut down.

Hospital-acquired infections are also considered as healthcare-associated infections that are obtained after hospitalization. Hospital-acquired infections have been caused by bacterial, viral, and fungal pathogens. The risk of HAI has been linked to infection control practices within the healthcare and the prevalence of various pathogens within the healthcare setting. The risk of HAI has been higher within the ICU settings and is acquired from the staff, patients, and the hospital facilities. The transmission of these pathogens within the healthcare settings has been complex due to contact with the healthcare workers and contaminated environments.

Considerably, to ensure that hospital-acquired infections and surgical errors are eliminated, there is a need for a quality improvement plan. Several options can be utilized to ensure that surgical errors are eliminated. Before surgery begins all equipment and instruments being used should be counted and surgeons advised to have periodic timeouts to conduct reevaluations and double-check all the equipment used while beginning the surgery (De Rezende, Melleiro and Shimoda, 2019). Allowing surgeons to take breaks is essential in assessing the settings to ensure that everything is happening as planned. While conducting a surgery the anesthesiologists need to meet the patients before the procedure to ensure that they acquire crucial information and equip the patient on how the procedure will be conducted.

Teamwork is also important in quality improvement since it keeps the healthcare professionals on track through collaboration to make sure proper tasks are completed. Lead by the distribution of leadership and roles at all levels teamwork adds values, drives decisions, and improves efficiency (Rosen et al., 2018). Having a team that is committed to improving healthcare quality enables the healthcare professionals with the same knowledge to work together thus achieving a common goal.

Infection control policies and procedures will be introduced to eliminate health-related infections. For instance, adhering to the standard sterile techniques while conducting caring for wounds, caring, and inserting medical devices, or performing the surgery will impact the infection prevention practices (Rodziewicz and Hipskind, 2020). Ensuring that patients and physicians maintain hygiene measures will reduce the chances of infection in the health care environment.

Through introducing teamwork among physicians, they will be able to work more in a group setting rather than working independently. Therefore, in this case, the surgeons will be able to cooperate will carry out the surgeries to ensure that they are performing the correct procedures and to the right patient. The goal of teamwork is to ensure that the patients receive treatment without having any injuries or complications as a result of the surgery. For instance, teamwork will ensure that the clinicians and the administrators are collaborating with the physicians to ensure that the necessary steps are being taken to reduce surgical errors. The importance of having infection control procedures and policies in place is to ensure that healthcare workers and patients are protected against infectious diseases. The policies and procedures will offer guidelines for control, investigation, and prevention thus reducing the spread of infections among clinicians, physicians, and patients.

The quality improvement plan will focus on teamwork and enforcement of policies and procedures that will enhance patient outcomes through reduced medical errors. With the physicians, clinicians, and administrators working together and understanding the infection control procedures and policies, Thunder hospital will ensure a reliable and sustained healthcare process that will improve care delivery. These initiatives will enhance the healthcare professionals’ practices and improve the patient experiences thus paving way for improved healthcare quality for Thunder Hospital.

References

De Rezende, H. A., Melleiro, M. M., & Shimoda, G. T. (2019). Interventions to reduce patient identification errors in the hospital setting: a systematic review protocol. JBI Evidence Synthesis, 17(1), 37-42.

Rodziewicz, T. L., & Hipskind, J. E. (2020). Medical error prevention. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.

Rosen, M. A., DiazGranados, D., Dietz, A. S., Benishek, L. E., Thompson, D., Pronovost, P. J., & Weaver, S. J. (2018). Teamwork in healthcare: Key discoveries enabling safer, high-quality care. American Psychologist, 73(4), 433.