The Quality Improvement Assignment Discussion

The Quality Improvement Assignment Discussion

Quality improvement is a vital aspect of healthcare provision as it facilitates monitoring and evaluation of clinical processes in terms of patient safety, effectiveness of care delivery and the welfare of healthcare workers. Without quality improvement, healthcare providers would have no initiative to evaluate and improve standards of care. My healthcare organization values quality improvement, the reason behind the ongoing implementation of a medication administration and management information system to minimize medication errors. The Quality Improvement Assignment Discussion

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Medication errors are a significant risk to patient safety and are caused by use of incorrect medication, improper form and strength of dosage, dosage miscalculation, and drug-to-drug interactions. Some of these errors such as drug-to-drug interactions, dosage miscalculation, and incorrect medication, can prevented by utilizing health information systems. Drug-to-drug interactions are a subject of extensive research by pharmacists and are therefore well understood. This information can be utilized to prevent harm to patients by entering a patient’s prescriptions into a database, which then determines the possibility of drug-to-drug interactions and finds correlations between the use of specific drugs and adverse reactions in patients with particular conditions or traits. This is an excellent way of preventing this type of medication error as the volume of information and search rate of a computer system is impossibly hard for healthcare workers to match. The Quality Improvement Assignment Discussion

Use of incorrect medication is caused by factors such as nurse error and mislabeling. A medication management program can manage mislabeling via barcodes and using machine-readable labels at the outset to limit improper labeling. As much as this can help, I acknowledge that incorrect medication largely results from human error, something the system cannot control. Nonetheless, it helps reduce medication errors from mislabeling by a significant margin. The system also facilitates accurate dosage levels by calculating proper dosages based on illness, other drugs being administered, and patient vital data such as weight, age and heart rate. I think implementing the system promotes patient safety and improves the quality of care.

The plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle is an iterative problem-solving framework that is particularly useful in implementing change or improvements. The PDSA cycle was utilized, where the problem of medication error as a risk to patient safety and as a factor compromising quality of care was recognized in the planning stage. The solution, in this case a medication management information system, was implemented in the “do” stage. The study stage entails monitoring and review of how effectively implementing the system lowers the incidence of medication errors. This is achieved through a feedback system that has been provided for nurses and patients. Issues raised in the review stage will be evaluated, and the best solutions identified and implemented in the next phase of the PDSA cycle. This facilitates continual improvement in my workplace with regard to preventing harm from medication errors.

On the culture, I think my workplace has a moderately healthy culture. Communication, teamwork and collaboration are really emphasized among caregiving staff. Nursing teams in a given unit are tight-knit to the point one almost feels as an outsider in another unit. This works well for task execution. We are also conversant with effective conflict resolution skills and how to maintain civility in our facility. Bullying amongst nurses is unheard of even though such incidents are sometimes experienced with patients. The point of contention with my workplace is how the hospital administration treats nursing staff. Communications are made off-handedly, lacking in respect, and there is no engagement in making decisions and developing policies that impact how we work. In essence, I cannot complain too much about the culture at my workplace. The Quality Improvement Assignment Discussion