Quality Improvement Initiative Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Quality Improvement Initiative
Quality improvement is one of the common objectives that all healthcare organization put on the front line. Healthcare organizations often look forward to ensuring that they improve all processes and tools at the workplace to enhance the quality of their services. High-quality services help to increase clients’ experience and satisfaction at the healthcare centres. In health care, quality improvements initiatives range from the patient, family of the patient, nurses, management and other external stakeholders (Varkey et al., 2007). Thus, improvement of quality in the healthcare setting is a joint process that requires the coordination of all the stakeholders, especially, the family, patient and the nurses.
Quality improvement must not necessarily affect the entire healthcare organization. In most cases, quality improvement is done at specific departments or cases (Varkey et al., 2007). Based on my place of employment, one of the areas that been identified for quality improvement is on the prevention of ulcers for patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). Ulcer patients at the ICU have been identified to be in a tremendous risky following the current ICU system setup. As a result, the area has attracted the attention of everyone in healthcare. A quick response is required to improve the quality of services, tools and all other elements used at the ICU. ICU patients are usually immobile, thereby making it dangerous to admit ulcer patients. The admission of ulcer patients at the ICU makes them develop pressure wounds. Pressure ulcers are often a nursing issue since nurses are the one that assesses the health state of the patients daily (Reddy et al., 2006). As a result, nurses have a role in ensuring that they provide excellent care to these patients with these conditions. Hence, quality care can be achieved by enhancing the quality of nursing services. For the current case, nurses need to be equipped with technological skills that can help to maintain the skin integrity of the patients. This summary, therefore, provides an executive summary of the quality improvement initiative to be employed in the case organization.
Additionally, quality improvement mainly targets nurses. However, other stakeholders, such as family and management, might be involved in some way to achieve quality improvement in preventing pressure ulcers for patients in ICU. The nurses are the primary targets because they are the ones responsible for ensuring safe care of the patients. Therefore, they need to improve on how to handle the patients, bearing in mind that they are handling fragile patients. On the other hand, the family will be required to coordinate with the nurses in the process of improving care for their patients. The family must corporate when called upon and respond when they are needed to help in making any decision about the patient. Lastly, the management will chip in by providing the necessary finances to fuel the process of quality improvement.
The quality improvement initiative will bring several benefits to the organization. In the first place, improving care processes in an organization reduces the possibility of redundancy and failure. Moreover, quality improvement initiative will help to pull out the traditional healthcare practices, and concepts hence utilize the latest technologies to perform efficiently and generate better care results for the ulcer patients in ICU. Besides, the initiative will help to enhance the speed of responding to emergency cases involving these patients. In general, quality improvement in a healthcare centre is meant to improve safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of ulcer patients.
Additionally, the implementation of quality improvement initiatives requires interprofessional collaboration. The initiative will, therefore, require different health workers with divergent backgrounds such as families, caregivers, community, and patients (Davidson, 2009). The above professional will be needed on various occasions in decision making. The collaboration will ultimately help to improve the customer’s experience, preventing adverse drug reaction, decreasing mortality and morbidity, and ensuring optimization of medication dosages. For collaboration to be efficient, five principles must be applied. The principles willingness, trust, empowerment, effective communication and respect.
The implementation of the initiative requires training of nurses and some improved technology tools. Professional trainers will be outsourced to pump the skills to the nurses. Besides, several tools and equipment will be required to facilitate the two-week activity. The training session of nurses is likely to use a significant amount of money. On the other hand, tools such as stimulator, First Derm technology, and Cureskin, Eczema Tracker will be required. The tools are costly. Therefore, the management will be necessary to release a significant amount of money to implement the initiative.
Lastly, with the initiative underway, the next important step is to evaluate the effectiveness of the initiative from time to time. For that reason, various aspects of the project will be evaluated such as; the ease of using the new tools, the speed of operations, the changes on the patient, communication, patient outcome and so on. If positive results are notable upon implementing the initiative, then, the initiative will be upheld. However, in case the outcomes are negative, there will be a need to see in the areas where the initiative can be improved.
References
Davidson, J. E. (2009). Family-centered care: meeting the needs of patients’ families and helping families adapt to critical illness. Critical Care Nurse, 29(3), 28-34.
Reddy, M., Gill, S. S., & Rochon, P. A. (2006). Preventing pressure ulcers: a systematic review. Jama, 296(8), 974-984.
Varkey, P., Reller, M. K., & Resar, R. K. (2007, June). Basics of quality improvement in health care. In Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Vol. 82, No. 6, pp. 735-739). Elsevier.