Question

The Summary Open Quiz is an opportunity for you to prepare for class and assess the knowledge and skills gained at the conclusion of class. These areas will be covered by your instructor. Use your reading and knowledge and skills to answer these questions and bring your written answers to class. Briefly discuss three important considerations that contribute to a "culture of safety". Briefly discuss the regulatory requirements for maintaining a safe environment. Briefly discuss two quality indicators and their impact on health outcomes. What data sets can be used for clinical decision making? How do the use of data sets impact clinical judgment, minimize risk, and reduce errors?

Answer 1

The idea of “culture of safety” originated outside the brim of health care. The commitment of an organization to establish an environment for working safely while managing any hazardous work is the "culture of safety"

The key features are:

• Identification and acceptance of the high-risk nature of activities and the goal to achieve consistently safe operations.
• An environment where individuals are free to report errors or near misses without fear of punishment
• Encouragement of every level of employees to seek solutions to patient safety problems.
• Use of resources to address safety concerns

Enhancing the culture of safety within health care setting is an essential component of preventing or reducing errors and improving the overall standard of health care. Nurses are always facing the problem of lack of a blame-free environment. The contributors to the problem are poor teamwork, underestimation of capabilities and ineffective communication. Modification in these areas and use of evidence-based practices and modern techniques like SBAR communication can minimize the errors and improve the culture of safety.

Regulatory requirements are very important in promoting safe culture in a healthcare setting.

They include:

Policies and procedures

Availability of safe equipment

Constant guidance and supervision

Development of trusted work environment

Supervision

Safety training

Adherence to safety practices

Compliance with the policies and programs

Provision of training materials

Proper management of hazardous waste

Prevention of unsafe practices

AHRQ quality indicators

Quality Indicators (QIs) are used to track and measure clinical performance and outcomes. It uses the standardized, evidence-based measures of health care to assess the quality. There are mainly four QIs.

1. PQI or Prevention Quality Indicators

PQIs are used with hospital inpatient discharge data to find out the quality of care for ambulatory care sensitive conditions. It emphasizes the prevention, early intervention and prevention of complications. Another concept is the provision of best outpatient care which helps in reducing the inpatient admissions. PQIs are population-based strategies.

Advantages:

It can provide an insight into community health status

Effectiveness of preventive services are assessed

Used as a screening tool to identify the potential health care problems

Helps in further improvement of care

Help public health agencies in improving health care quality in the communities.

Act as window into unmet community health needs

2. IQI or Inpatient Quality Indicators

IQIs act as a perspective on quality of care in a hospital by using hospital administrative data. This reflects quality of care inside hospitals. The parameters used are inpatient mortality for certain procedures and medical conditions, utilization of procedures and their overuse, underuse or misuse, and volume of procedures in terms of effectiveness.

Advantages of IQI:

Help hospitals identify potential problem areas

Assess quality of care provided

Use mortality indicators to find the judicial use of procedures

Use volume indicators to find out the effect of more number of procedure on its effectiveness

3. PSI or Patient Safety Indicators

4. PDI or Pediatric Quality Indicators

CDS (Clinical Decision Support Systems)

CDS (Clinical Decision Support Systems) provides health-related information to the healthcare professionals, patients and families in order to make decisions relevant to the patient care. CDS utilizes the different data sets like Clinical guidelines, EHR, computerized alerts, Reminders to health care suppliers and consumers. Data on drug use, allergies, care provided, history, associated conditions etc. are enrolled in the database

CDS is the modified IT health system that incorporates the knowledge and data which allows the access of concerned personnel. It helps the workflow, and the data is formulated in such a way that it helps easy decision making.

There are many benefits like,

Improved quality of care

Minimizes the time for decision

Effective use of resources

Provide standardized care

Easy accessibility through HER

Easy exchange of information

Provider and patient satisfaction

Cost-effectiveness

Determining the approaches for CDs is very important and make sure that all the staffs are involved in it to ensure completeness.

·         Coordinate all staffs.

·         Examine the current situation.

·         Plan to modify the effectiveness

·         Testing and re-planning is also necessary

·         Different features and fixes are considered

·         Standardized order sets and reminders make sure the inclusion