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Quality and safety are key components to any business’ success. Planning intentional quality and safety takes committed leaders who value intentional programmatic design and measurement. Highly reliable organizations, especially in healthcare, are relentlessly focused on the assessment of systems producing the associated clinical and business outcomes. Their desire to create a continuous improvement culture based on sound design, efficient systems, and engaged people can yield excellent results.
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In recent years in healthcare, quality has been driven by outside entities tying financial compensation for services rendered to clinical outcomes. This has spurred a number of improvement projects related to efficiency in all aspects of service and product delivery. Tools such as checklists, clinical best practices, standardized treatment, and more have all elevated the standard of care.
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Staff engagement in becoming better is crucial; we must all be focused on excellence. Each person’s role on the healthcare team has an opportunity to make a critical contribution to the whole. The global COVID-19 pandemic showed the consequences with one or more weak links in the system. The healthcare industry has much to overcome in the future, but staying focused on quality and safety is paramount.
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The nursing process and quality improvement process are much the same: Assess, Diagnose, Plan, Implement, and Evaluate; and Plan, Do, Study/Check, and Act. Both are intentional and prescriptive in what needs to be done and how it gets done. These kinds of tools can apply to all kinds of nursing, healthcare, and life activities to ensure both quality and safety.
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Practice Pearl
Be intentional about learning new knowledge and skills. PLAN for it! Make time and work it into your weekly or monthly schedule. It’s important to be at the top of your game and know your craft well—whatever nursing or healthcare specialty you choose.
Action Step: Make a list of new things you want to learn or new skills you want to attain:
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Learn to realistically prioritize short-term work to be done each day and longer-term career goals.
Focus. When it’s time to begin learning new things, remind yourself how you learn best. Do you prefer to read something? Listen to something or someone? Do something, such as obtaining a new skill? Ideally, if you can actually do all three things, you will learn best.
Action Step: Consider reading out loud and recording what you read so you can hear it back again.
Action Step: Consider outlining your assigned reading and then making notes about each important piece of the work you are trying to understand.
Action Step: Once you have done each of these, try to teach it to yourself without looking at the content (like teach-back for a patient). If you cannot simplify the content for easy explanation, go back and review.
Never rely on memory alone, ...