Scholarly Activity Summary
Overview
During my internship period, I was involved in the quality improvement committee meeting. It is one of the scholarly activities where I was welcomed to represent all the other nurses under internship to present overviews on the way to improve total quality management in healthcare. The meeting included representatives from all the departments such as procurement, human resource management, inpatient and outpatient department, nursing, doctors, emergency, health and safety, security, and catering department. The meeting was open for the community and patient representatives for public participation, who contributes their opinion on how they would like the services to be offered and method to improve patient care services in the health care facility.
Problems
The main objectives of the committee were to discuss how and methods to improve the patient cares services following various complain by the stakeholder on the standard of our services (Sekaran & Seymann, 2014). The first objectives of the meeting were the increasing patient mortality in hand on nurses and doctors. The healthcare facility had gained a negative reputation for the public to increase inpatient deaths due to a lack of better services provided by nurses.
The second issues that were discussed come from the outpatient complaint on time spend before they receive the treatment and increase in readmission of the patients. There was a lack of efficiency in the process, and policies used that increased the patient waiting times lead to more complaints from the patient (Wolak, Overman, Willis, Hedges, & Spivak, 2019). It raised the issues of lack of cooperation between the nurses, doctors, and customer care desk, leading to increased time wastage on the line. It contributed to most of the patients being readmitted to the health care facilities as their health condition worsen while waiting on the line.
The last agenda discussed was on the increasing cases of health safety in the healthcare facility. There were increasing cases of patient and medical staff infection while on the healthcare facility compound. One of the main contributors to the problem was most of the patients spending more time in the waiting room before being treated hence increasing the risk of spreading the infection to others (McLean, Carriker, & Bordley, 2017). The other problem was developed by the culture of not opposing healthy and safety policies enacted by the healthcare facility, mostly by medical staff.
Solutions
Being a member of the quality improvement committee, we held the meeting every two week for two months in the hospital conference and meeting room to come up with the best solution to the identified problem. At the end of the committee meeting, the following resolution was proposed. First was increase education and training development program that will ensure all the medical staff gain experience and competencies to handle inpatients (Sekaran & Seymann, 2014). The program aims to improve the quality of services offered by nurses and reduce the rate of mortality of inpatient while under nurses’ care.
The committee also provides integration of the health care information system to improve the services offered. There is a need to automate most of the activities performed by nurses and customer care to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the health care system. One of the information technologies proposed was electronic health care records that will automate all the patient medical history, making it easy for a nurse to review the patient medical history and provide a quick recommendation (Seto & Inoue, 2016). The aim is to reduce patient waiting time while increasing the efficiency of the medical staff to handle outpatient cases.
Lastly, the committee proposed a hygiene measurement system that focuses on the issues of patient and medical staff getting an infection (McLean, Carriker, & Bordley, 2017). It includes the hand hygiene policies that should be emphasized to all stakeholders visiting the facilities. The medical physician was to be cautioned on the developing behavior of not following the hospital's health and safety policies.
Opportunities
The objective of quality improvement is essential to the retention of the stakeholder and adhering to the health care standard. The take-home point was on how to address health care organization problems that require the contribution of every department. I learned the need to include all the stakeholders in total quality improvement, including involving the public and patients to the meeting. It was I great opportunity representing all the attaches in the program that help develop my leadership skills (Kim, 2016). It also helped me understand the nature of the nursing activities and the role they play toward overall organizational improvement and growth.
Program Competencies
Involvement in the committee required people with experience, and understanding of the organization's performance, major challenges facing the organization, problem-solving skills (Kim, 2016). Leadership and communication skill play a vital role in coming up with a solution and delivering the message clearly and concisely way.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the scholar activities help me realize some of my strengths and weakness in being part of the quality improvement team. It provided a better understanding of the role of quality improvement management in any healthcare organization. The quality improvement program aims to provide better patient care service, remove waste processes, and reduce the cost of health care’s facility.
References
Kim, J. (2016). Nurses' patient safety activities observed by nursing students. Quality Improvement in Health Care, 22(1), 71-90. doi:10.14371/qih.2016.22.1.71
McLean, H. S., Carriker, C., & Bordley, W. C. (2017). Good to Great: Quality-Improvement Initiative Increases and Sustains Pediatric Health Care Worker Hand Hygiene Compliance. Hospital Pediatrics, 7(4), 189-196. doi:10.1542/hpeds.2016-0110
Sekaran, N. K., & Seymann, G. B. (2014). Hospital-based Quality Improvement Initiatives. Hospital Medicine Clinics, 3(3), e441-e456. doi: 10.1016/j.ehmc.2014.03.008
Seto, R., & Inoue, T. (2016). Nursing Documentation Improvement at Post-Acute Care Settings. Proceedings of the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health. doi:10.5220/0005892101630168
Wolak, E., Overman, A., Willis, B., Hedges, C., & Spivak, G. F. (2019). Maximizing the Benefit of Quality Improvement Activities. Journal of Nursing Care Quality, 1. doi:10.1097/ncq.0000000000000438
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DNP-830-Module8ScholarlyActivitySummary.docx
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