Healthcare: Quality Improvement Initiative Evaluation Report

This report evaluates a quality improvement (QI) initiative within a healthcare organization, focusing on the impact of training programs for nursing professionals. The initiative aimed to address issues such as a lack of evidence-based practice knowledge, medication administration errors, an...Read More

Running head: QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
QUALITY IMPROVEMENT INITIATIVE EVALUATION
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
Healthcare organization is continuously evolving in delivering effective care to the
patients. For providing regular qualitative care towards the patients, the healthcare
organization needs to monitor and evaluate the quality of services (Willis, 2018). Nursing
professionals are the frontline healthcare professions that deliver services. Therefore, the
healthcare organization needs to assess the quality measures and formulate a practical quality
plan that involves the nursing professionals for enhancing the quality. The adverse events or
near-miss incidents are the major causes of decreasing qualitative care. Therefore, I would
like to evaluate the conflicts or errors that have impacted the quality of our healthcare
organization.
I worked as a registered nurse, and my organization monitor at regular intervals for
improving the issues that have impacted on the quality of care. The quality improvement
initiative of the organization includes the total quality management tool. Quality management
contains four major elements. These elements are quality planning, quality assurance, quality
control, and quality improvement (Sallis, 2014). The first quality improvement initiative that
has been taken in the organization is providing practical training to the nursing professionals
of the organization as it was found that nurses often lack the knowledge to perform an
evidence based approach and in medical administration errors. The training that was provided
by the organization includes usage of practical projects for developing skills, online modules,
role plays, simulation, and conducted regular workshops or seminars for the latest evidence
based practice.
The quality initiative taken by the organization is related to the major conditions that
have reduced the quality of health outcomes of the organization. From analyzing closely
about the health outcomes, it was found that significant factors that impacted on the health
outcomes are lack of knowledge in nursing professionals and vital cultural competence. The
nurses who have joined the organization just after their graduation tends to make more errors

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as compared to the other nurses (Whitehead et al., 2016). These newly joined nurses lack
experience in administrating medicines, identifies any possible reaction, and unable to
counsel the patients or their family members (The Joint Commission, 2020). Another major
problem was unable to follow or practice the evidence based guidelines for treating and
monitoring the patients. The nurses were facing difficulties in active communication with the
patients, especially while delivering any sad news. Therefore, the quality initiation of
providing training and conducting workshops has been implemented for reducing these
factors and improving the deliveries of qualitative care by the nursing professionals.
The success of the quality improvement initiative can be measured by setting
benchmarks and achieving the benchmarks would help in measuring the outcomes. The
benchmarks that were included for measuring the outcomes are improved inpatient
experience, patient health outcomes, and effective communication. Effective assurance of
quality and performance requires the measurement of the outcomes. Outcome-based practice
or measuring outcome would identify the key factors that need to improve. With the help of
training, the major outcome can be seen as effective communication. The role-play and usage
of the practical project has helped in the practice of evidence based practice. The evidence
based practice has reduced the medical errors that were majorly occurred by the newly joined
nursing professionals. The online module training has also helped nurses to adopt new
technology and medicines or any techniques for delivering care.
Although the quality improvement techniques have improved efficiency in addressing
the issues that the nursing professionals were facing. Few other measures needed to be
measured, improving the clinical supervision and adoption of electronic technology that
would enhance the overall quality. Nursing professionally works under stress and mostly
ends up working under enormous pressure. The nurses who are lacking with experiences tend
to increase their anxiety and decrease their confidence level to perform their duties. It is

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essential for the supervisor or nursing leader to ensure their support for building their trust
and confidence. The clinical supervision would help the nurses to share their experience and
knowledge with their senior colleagues or supervisor to enhance their practices in delivering
the care.
The quality initiative cannot be done only with the support of single professionals. It
has to be done by incorporating multiple other professionals of the hospital or healthcare
organization (Vachon et al., 2015). Nursing professionals work in teams, and the teams
consist of multiple professionals such as physician, therapists, social workers, and other
clinical technicians. Hence, their impact on nurses would also affect the outcomes. The
training that has been provided for enhancing the knowledge of nurses, and by incorporating
other professionals, it would improve in sharing responsibility, accountability and would
work together for achieving the shared goals. The other professionals in the teams have a
different perspective in delivering the care. According to Gadolin & Andersson (2017),
quality would improve by aligning with other professional logic and building a strong
working relationship. It would further help in fostering the institution's work, would bridge
the multiple institutional logics, and also helps in overcoming the possible barriers that come
up in the healthcare organization (Dickerson & Latina, 2017).
While analyzing the measures of quality improvement, I have spoken to the
administration, nursing leaders, and senior management of the hospital. They have shared the
positive outcomes of the measure that is training for the nurses. They have realized that due
to heavy patient flow and increased in the multiple needs of the patients, nurses often need to
work more than their shifts timing and stay busy in the entire schedule of their duty.
Therefore, sometimes it increases the administration error and finds difficulties in receiving
any support from other colleagues and supervisors. The senior management has encountered
some problems in taking the feedback from the nurses and other clinical professionals about

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the efficacy of the training in their course of duties or their communications. The nursing
leaders have also mentioned that the nurses who have just joined after graduation are facing
anxiety while delivering the care and often fail in communicating or bringing any issues
under the supervisor's notice. The guidelines and protocols of providing the necessary
treatment are not mostly followed due to the lack of knowledge.
The recommendation for additional indicators has already been discussed, and those
were clinical supervision and usage of electronic technology. Apart from this, the grading
system for the nurses during the deliveries of training is necessary. The scores would help in
analyzing the knowledge level and effectiveness of the training or the measures of QI
(Bagattini et al., 2019). Electronic communication is very much efficient in quick
communication during the emergences, and also it would help the nurses to communicate
with the respective physicians directly. The technology would also help in sharing the
information of the patient before the nurse handover the patient under the care of other
nurses. One such technique is Information communication technology (ICT), it is for storing
the medical records of the patients and also helps in easy retrieval of information whenever
necessary (Arvanitis & Loukis, 2016). This technology helps in promoting a patient-centric
approach, thus results in improving quality along with the experience of the patients.
The quality improvement protocols such as Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle are
necessary to evaluate along with analyzing the measures or tools of quality improvement (QI)
(Johnson, 2016). The PDCA cycle is a four-step method that would help in analyzing the
effectiveness of the actions that have been taken by the healthcare organization in improving
the quality. The planning is the initial stage that would formulate an overview for addressing
the issues, the second stage would implement the plan, and the third stage checks the
implementation and impact of it. The following final stage would analyze the pitfalls and

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necessarily act upon it. This cycle would help in improving the measures of QI and is a
continuous approach to improving quality.
Hospitals or healthcare organization is a setting that has to deliver their service in
higher quality. Therefore, the decision related to the quality improvement must include the
professions from multiple disciplines. As the caregivers work in a team for effective in
providing efficient deliveries of care to the patients. The ethical consideration is necessary for
improving the care that would benefit the care providers along with care seekers.

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References
Arvanitis, S., & Loukis, E. N. (2016). Investigating the effects of ICT on innovation and
performance of European hospitals: an exploratory study. The European Journal of
Health Economics, 17(4), 403-418.
Bagattini, F., Karlsson, I., Rebane, J., & Papapetrou, P. (2019). A classification framework
for exploiting sparse multi-variate temporal features with application to adverse drug
event detection in medical records. BMC medical informatics and decision
making, 19(1), 7.
Dickerson, J., & Latina, A. (2017). Team nursing: A collaborative approach improves patient
care. Nursing2019, 47(10), 16-17.
Gadolin, C., & Andersson, T. (2017). Healthcare quality improvement work: a professional
employee perspective. International journal of health care quality assurance.
Johnson, C. N. (2016). The benefits of PDCA. Quality Progress, 49(1), 45.
Sallis, E. (2014). Total quality management in education. Routledge.
The Joint commission. (2020). Nursing Care Center 2020 National Patient Safety Goals.
Jointcommission.org. Retrieved 20 March 2020, from
https://www.jointcommission.org/standards/national-patient-safety-goals/nursing-
care-center-2020-national-patient-safety-goals/.
Vachon, B., Désorcy, B., Gaboury, I., Camirand, M., Rodrigue, J., Quesnel, L., ... &
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