Quality Enhancement: Plan for St. Bridget Private Hospital (SBPH)

This report details a quality improvement plan initiated by St. Bridget Private Hospital (SBPH) to enhance its performance, patient health outcomes, and overall efficiency. The plan addresses critical issues such as infection control and operational delays, particularly focusing on reducing the turnaround time in the operating theatre. The current practice of checking patients in an open area with disposable curtains poses infection risks and compromises patient dignity. The proposed solution involves creating a dedicated, allocated area for patient preparation before surgery, which will help to minimize delays, reduce infection risks associated with curtain use, and improve patient care. While the setup of this new area will require time, it is expected to provide a cost-effective and efficient means of improving both patient safety and operational workflow within SBPH.

Quality improvement plan is basically a set of quality commitments which is aligned
with the system as well as the provincial priorities that any healthcare organization acquire to
improve its patient care experience (Sharif et al. 2016). Quality improvement plans are not
only performance management tool, but also a mechanism through which organizational
leadership are held accountable for the improvement of quality care provided to the patients
(Sharif et al. 2016). In order to enhance its performance and patient health outcome, St.
Bridget Private Hospital (SBPH) has taken an initiative to incorporate quality improvement
plan to enhance its efficiency as well as productivity and to improve its overall patient health
outcome.
Healthcare organizations face multiple difficulties regarding infection especially, for
the patients who are associated with surgery. Apart from that, time is another factor which
turns out to be an obstacle against the productivity of the healthcare organization. Sometimes
delay in providing care can cause serious hazards and so it is considered as one of the greatest
concerns across the healthcare settings. The turnaround time of the operation theatre is also a
greatest reason of delay. It is the minimal essential time required for cleaning the operating
room and preparing for the next operational case (Mizumoto, Cristaudo & Hendahewa 2016).
It inversely affects the efficiency of the operating room. Therefore, it is highly necessary to
maintain the turnaround time to control the dignity of the patients and to minimize the delay
in sending the patients to the operation theatre. SBPH is looking forward for a change
initiative that will address the dignity of the patients and will be efficient enough in reducing
the time in a cost-effective way.
Transmission based precautions are the second tier of precaution, right after the
standard precautions taken for the patients by the healthcare professionals (Fisch et al. 2014).
In this way, additional precautions are taken to the patients who are infection-prone. Patients,
who have MRSA, VRE, etc., need transmission based precaution before taking to the

operating room (Morgan, Wenzel & Bearman 2017). In order to take excessive care of the
patients to prevent any kind of infection it is highly necessary to follow some appropriate
restrictions. In SBPH, patients coming to the operation theatre are duly checked first at the
open area, where only some disposable curtains are used to maintain patients’ dignity. But, in
this way, every time, nurses are touching the curtains which can result in a great issue
regarding infection among the patients and others. Along with that, until the operating room
is not ready, patients are left in the open-area which is dangerous and contributes to delay. In
this regard, having a special allocated area, where the patients can be taken before taking to
the operating room, and nurses can check them properly. It will also take place during the
turnaround time. In this way, delay in taking the patient to the operating room can be
successfully avoided, and also, risk of infection regarding the curtain issue can be avoided.
However, the whole set up will be time-consuming and it will take a few days to set up a
different allocated area for the patients of SBPH.

References
Fisch, J., McNamara, S. E., Lansing, B. J., & Mody, L. (2014). The 24-hour report as an
effective monitoring and communication tool in infection prevention and control in nursing
homes. American journal of infection control, 42(10), 1112-1114.
Mizumoto, R., Cristaudo, A. T., & Hendahewa, R. (2016). A surgeon-led model to improve
operating theatre change-over time and overall efficiency: a randomised controlled
trial. International Journal of Surgery, 30, 83-89.
Morgan, D. J., Wenzel, R. P., & Bearman, G. (2017). Contact precautions for endemic
MRSA and VRE: time to retire legal mandates. Jama, 318(4), 329-330.
Sharif, H., Shehzad, N., Farooqi, J. and Karim, S., 2016. Bringing efficiency into practice: a
quality improvement initiative to reduce operating room turnaround time. JPMA: Journal of
Pakistan Medical Association, 66(10), pp.S-8.