Amanda, Davies

Is the article Evidence Based?

Name of the journal and year of publication

Yes

Name: International Journal for Quality in Health Care

Year: 2016

State the problem and the goal of the project

Does this project correlate with your problem? How?

What are you trying to achieve? Does the article support the goal?

Problem: Delays in Orthopedic and Neuro-Surgical units. This leads to high rates of mortality as a result of limb and joint complications not being attended on time.

Goal: the goal of this project improve the quality of care provided to patients by proposing a plan where the units will cover staffing for every other’s peak days.

The plan proposal:

Monday and Wednesday: both orthopedic surgeons and neuro surgeons be present in the hospital since this is a peak day.

Tuesday: Orthopedic surgeons

Wednesday: None

Thursday: both orthopedic surgeons and neurosurgeons

Friday: neurosurgeons

Pairing such surgeons will enhance efficiency since the patients will not have to wait until Thursday for the neurosurgeons to come. This well help in ensuring that all kinds of interventions developed to be efficacious are executed effectively when needed.

The goal of our project is to propose a plan that will increase the quality of care provided to patients, promote patient satisfaction and improve the morale of the staffs. The article is significantly related to our project since it aims also at improving the complexity settings in health facilities in order to the quality of care. The major focus of our project is to reduce the time patients have to wait in order to get treatment. our project proposes that both professionals to be available three times a week to enhance efficacy.

Strengths

What is good about the article?

Support: our project has been supported by various parties who I believe were of greater impact to the progress of the project. It was also supported by the administration as well as the orthopedic groups in the hospital. The orthopedic surgeons were empowered to enhance their quality of care through changes from the project. The orthopedic groups were of great help since it made it easy to determine what they are doing now that could be wrong and how it can be changed to better patient care. This help to gauge analyze they opinions about the proposal before implementation. It helped in incorporating their ideas in coming up with a plan that will be implementable in the ground and not in paper.

Another strength for the project is that it is fully funded by the health facility hence all types of resources were not a challenge to the project. Many projects fail due to lack of resources as well as inefficiencies.

The leadership style of the project team was bottom top approach. This help to form a good plan based on opinions from the two units themselves and then presented to the executive team for approval. Since the executive are part of the project, consulting them in the progress ensured that the project was in the right direction and the end product will be ready for approval. The collaboration in the project reduces the chance of the plan facing resistance in the two outlined units in the hospital.

Implementation areas?

NO, our project was executed in Orthopedic and Neuro-Surgical units while the one in the article was implemented in epistemological units.

Internal weaknesses

Compliance: Based of the researcher’s findings, it was challenging for some staffs to comply with the new changes since they had gotten used the previous routines. most of them stated that this schedule would compromise a lot of their plans. They insisted that this kind of schedule would make them spend a lot of time in the hospital making them neglect their social life. Therefore, some were not ready to buy inn the idea.

Time: there was no enough time to carry out study in various units since it could exceed the time allocated for the project. The makes it questionable on whether the results are reliable to be applied in other units where most of the individuals were not involved in the project.

External opportunities

Care improvement: The results of the study revealed that the Orthopedic and Neuro-Surgical professionals could reduce times patients had to wait for them to be available in the hospital. this would also reduce congestion of patients throughout the weak since they have been added an extra day where they can visit the surgeons. The researchers also should have measured the level of satisfaction for the patients in order to determine whether whey are happy with the new changes.

Satisfaction of the staffs in the two units: the researchers discovered that there is a significant difference in the number of patients visiting every day since they were now distributed in three days. This reduced a lot of pressure on the surgeons on the days there are at work.

Threats

Reliability: this is the major threat in the project outcomes since the project focused in Orthopedic and Neuro-Surgical units while carrying out the study. Therefore, it is not easy to determine whether the results are applicable in other units such as emergency department, intensive care unit and cardiac care unit.

Time: most of the staffs complain that most of them will lack time to be with their families and exercise their social life. This is because most of them will tend to stand in for others to reduce waiting time for patients. Some of them tend to resign the job due to the new schedule.