Many patients’ first experience with a hospital happens in the ED. Hospitals know this and are constantly striving to improve the patient experience in the ED—not an easy task. There are lots of patients, and most, if not all, are worried and anxious.
As patient safety, infection control, and quality improvement professionals continue toward their “path to zero”—as in zero hospital-acquired infections, zero medication errors, and zero wrong-site surgeries—at some point or another, they usually stumble upon resistance. The...
When you read the words “patient safety” or “quality,” what images immediately come to mind? It might be nurses washing their hands, fall risk signs, doctors with checklists, bar codes, surgical timeout posters, sterile gloves, or maybe a patient’s color-coded alert wristband.
The Joint Commission recently announced approved revisions of the National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) on medication reconciliation. The goal, now NPSG.03.06.01 (formerly NPSG.08.01.01), is shorter and has fewer requirements. It takes effect July 1, 2011.
Quality improvement (QI) and patient safety projects are tough to implement. Most employees resist change and must be constantly encouraged to give new methods a chance. Nurses often begrudge any new documentation or process, fearing it will cut into...
When I was first accepted into my graduate program for healthcare administration, I remember scanning the coursework that I was about to undertake for the next two years. While investigating all the classes, I mentally...
Healthcare providers face a number of difficult challenges in the year ahead, only one of which is to improve patient care while reducing costs. The way to success, according to Maureen Bisognano, president and CEO of the IHI, is to think differently about patient care...
Medication errors, patient identification errors, and surgical errors are some of the unfortunate events that take place all too frequently in healthcare. In the constant battle to prevent these adverse events, one word keeps cropping up: checklists.
Improving nursing-sensitive indicators (NSI) or organizational indicators with a nursing component requires participation of direct-care bedside nurses. Quality improvement (QI) programs designed by organizational-level experts to improve patient care and driven down from the top will not...
