Providing Patients with a Quality Experience
Providing Patients with a Quality Experience Mary Lavonne Hoppes
Walden University
NURS 4021 Section 05, The Role of the Leader in Evaluating Data to Improve Quality and Safety
May 19, 2013
Providing Patients with a Quality Experience Patient safety and the quality of healthcare they receive can be improved by evaluating existing data from various sources such as the patient’s health record, laboratory findings, registration, administration and incident reports. One area that leaders are constantly striving to improve is the number of patient falls that occur within their area, especially now that they are no longer reimbursable. It is important to adopt and use a specific definition for a fall, otherwise the meaning is left too open and may be interpreted in various ways. The WHO (World Health Organization) defines a fall as “inadvertently coming to rest on the ground, floor or other lower level, excluding intentional change in position to rest in furniture, wall or other objects” (WHO, 2007). The purpose of this paper is to show how leaders analyze the data that is available to them and use that to develop and implement strategies to improve patient quality and safety.
Data Overview There are many separate factors that collectively help determine a patient’s fall risk. On the unit we are evaluating for this assignment all of the patient rooms are private. Although this is the best way to ensure patient privacy and decrease the risk of spreading a contagion, a private room can actually be a deterrent to patient falls. If there are two patients assigned to a single room a nurse will be present in that room about twice as much as they would be in a single occupancy room. The other patient and any visitors they had would be extra eyes watching the patient at-risk of falling and they could remind them to call for help if they needed to get up or even call for a nurse themselves and warn us of their roommate’s activity. There are also about
Walden University
NURS 4021 Section 05, The Role of the Leader in Evaluating Data to Improve Quality and Safety
May 19, 2013
Providing Patients with a Quality Experience Patient safety and the quality of healthcare they receive can be improved by evaluating existing data from various sources such as the patient’s health record, laboratory findings, registration, administration and incident reports. One area that leaders are constantly striving to improve is the number of patient falls that occur within their area, especially now that they are no longer reimbursable. It is important to adopt and use a specific definition for a fall, otherwise the meaning is left too open and may be interpreted in various ways. The WHO (World Health Organization) defines a fall as “inadvertently coming to rest on the ground, floor or other lower level, excluding intentional change in position to rest in furniture, wall or other objects” (WHO, 2007). The purpose of this paper is to show how leaders analyze the data that is available to them and use that to develop and implement strategies to improve patient quality and safety.
Data Overview There are many separate factors that collectively help determine a patient’s fall risk. On the unit we are evaluating for this assignment all of the patient rooms are private. Although this is the best way to ensure patient privacy and decrease the risk of spreading a contagion, a private room can actually be a deterrent to patient falls. If there are two patients assigned to a single room a nurse will be present in that room about twice as much as they would be in a single occupancy room. The other patient and any visitors they had would be extra eyes watching the patient at-risk of falling and they could remind them to call for help if they needed to get up or even call for a nurse themselves and warn us of their roommate’s activity. There are also about
References: Bates, D., Pruess, K., Souney, P., & Platt, R. (1995). Serious falls in hospitalized patients: correlates and resource utilization. American Journal of Medicine, 99(2), 137-143. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7625418 Carey, B. J. & Potter, J. F. (2001). Cardiovascular causes of falls. Age and Ageing, 30 (S4), 19-24. Retrieved from http://ageing.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/suppl_4/19.full.pdf Sullivan, E. (2012). Effective leadership and management in nursing. (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson World Health Organization. (2007). WHO global report on falls prevention in older age. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/ageing/publications/Falls_prevention7March.pdf