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IHI TOOL: Quality Improvement Project Charter

IHI TOOL: Quality Improvement Project Charter

IHI TOOL

Quality Improvement

Project Charter

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Developing an Improvement Project Charter

One of the first steps in setting up an improvement project is to write a project charter: the guiding document that helps a team structure its improvement project and develop and communicate a shared vision.

The charter provides a rationale and roadmap for the team’s work that can be used to clarify thinking about what needs to be done and why. It also provides a key communication tool to help inform your team, colleagues, constituents, sponsors, and stakeholders about what the team is doing. The charter helps keep the focus on a specific opportunity or problem and identifies the improvement team members.

The charter begins to answer the three essential questions of the Model for Improvement:

This tool provides a template for developing an improvement project charter and includes an example of a completed charter. Your project may require answers to some of these questions and not others, but we encourage teams to think carefully about the effect that each question might have on your project.

The goal is to help the team (including the improvement project sponsor) begin the very important process of thinking through the project, communicating with others, and engaging them in your work.

Developing an improvement project charter is an iterative process. The team should review the charter periodically with the improvement project sponsor, revising the charter as the project evolves and the team learns.

QI Project Charter

Team:

Project: Assessing the efficacy of antibacterial foam dispensers in healthcare settings

Sponsor:

Article Reference:

FDA. (2019). Antibacterial soap? you can skip it, use plain soap and water. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved September 25, 2022, from https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/antibacterial-soap-you-can-skip-it-use-plain-soap-and-water

Project Start Date:

Last Revised:

What are we trying to accomplish?

Problem

Handwashing is a successful approach to the prevention of several kinds of infections. The use of antibacterial foam dispensers in healthcare rotations is the first choice of nurses presently, however, no considerable evidence has been reported that confirms the antibacterial foam dispenser to be more reliable, safer and healthier. At the same place, no research-based evidence is found that represents the use of water and soap as a less effective method than antibacterial foam dispensers.

Project Description (defines what )

For this project, we intend to compare the manufacturing, ingredients, application, and outcomes of the use of antibacterial foam dispensers in comparison to the use of soap and water for handwashing by nurses in healthcare practice. The short-term goal of the project is to find out a comparatively more reliable, safer and healthier agent to use for hand-washing in healthcare practice. The long-term vision is to minimize the possible chances of the spread of communicable infection due to contaminated hands with microbes.

Rationale (defines why)

Replacement of antibacterial foam dispenser with long-established hand wash practice in active healthcare sites is necessary because as a matter of fact, it produces antibiotic resistance in germs and reloading of dispensers are susceptible to contamination.

Expected Outcomes and Benefits

FDA declared the use of triclosan and triclocarban in antibacterial foam unsafe for regular use and proscribe their usage (FDA, 2019). So, the success of this project will cut the hand bacterial load safely reforming the traditional hand washing preferences. Also, nurses' false beliefs concerning the effectiveness of the anti-bacterial foam dispensers will be remediated.

Aim Statement

Nursing staff working in hospitals is taken as a population, to find out the effectiveness of antibacterial foam dispensers in comparison to the use of normal soap and water for handwashing, to meet the outcome of a decrease in the spread of infection and communicable diseases within the timeframe set for six-months.

How will we know that a change is an improvement?

Outcome Measure(s)

· A measure of chemical exposure to a nursing staff

· A measure of antibiotic-resistant germs

Process Measure(s)

· The ratio of nurses satisfying the criteria for Health Needs Assessment

· The ratio of nursing staff completing the Health Needs Assessment

Balancing Measure(s)

· The incidence rate of communicable diseases

· Number of patients visiting healthcare centers with common preventable infections

What changes can we make that will result in improvement?

Initial Activities

· Develop functioning characters for evaluation and standards for basic acuity.

· Determine authentic measures by appraising the data collecting methods, for instance, the proportion of nurses who participated in the Health Needs Assessment

Change Ideas

Assimilate the Health Needs Assessment process to eliminate disparities in the procedure and to incorporate the given standards, seeking Health Needs Assessment, recommendation, observation, and estimation utilizing a case file.

Key Stakeholders

The nursing staff, social workers, public or private healthcare organizations, ancillary staff, infection control regulatory bodies, and hand hygiene services are the key stakeholders. Project presentation with supporting evidence-based research data will be presented to key stakeholders to engage them. Moreover, interviews and surveys will engross the stakeholders and bear the periodic meetings to measure outcomes.

Barriers

The improvement needed in this project demands a change in the personal attitude and preferences of nurses to choose normal soap with water over an antibacterial soap dispenser for handwashing. This change might be time-consuming and opposed by many nurses which is a possible barrier. However, with the support of FDA rules and scientific knowledge, it would be easy to convince the nurses.

Boundaries

The team should practice the use of soap and water for handwashing to disinfect them. The improvements made by the project would not need an assessment of antibacterial foam dispensers of different companies.

Reference

FDA. (2019). Antibacterial soap? you can skip it, use plain soap and water. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved September 25, 2022, from https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/antibacterial-soap-you-can-skip-it-use-plain-soap-and-water

Institute for Healthcare Improvement • ihi.org 2

Institute for Healthcare Improvement • ihi.org 2