Answer 3 for NRS 415 Provide an example of how you would apply CQI in your current or past position

 

Continuous quality improvement (CQI) enables nurses and other healthcare workers to adhere to best practices and clinical guidelines aimed at enhancing the level of service offering. At the core of CQI is a structured organizational process that involves people in planning and implementing a continuous seamless flow of improvement to offer quality health care meeting or exceeding patient expectations (Hill et al., 2020). CQI initiatives in nursing entail a systematic review of clinical practices to identify areas for enhancing patient care.

An example of using CQI in its current position is to reduce hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) that lead to poor outcomes and longer stays in the facility. In this case, HAIs are increasing in the facility due to poor hand hygiene protocol compliance among the staff. As such, the proposed CQI project is improving hand hygiene protocols and compliance for both healthcare providers and patients. The project will entail providing education and awareness sessions for the target audience to get information and placing hand hygiene instruments like hand sanitizers at strategic locations within the facility (McCalman et al., 2020). The project will also entail signage to improve information within the inpatient areas for better compliance.

The plan-do-study-act (PDSA) is an effective and easy quality improvement method or tool that will support the proposed CQI initiative. The plan will entail developing an intervention to enhance hand hygiene compliance. In this case, it entails staff education sessions, signage, and having hand washing machines and hand sanitizers at strategic points, and easy access to resources. The implementation of the intervention at a small level like within the department for trial entails the doing part (Sherwood et al., 2021). The study part of the model entails measuring the impact of the intervention on hand hygiene compliance and HAIs. Studying would involve continual observation and noting down staff behavior while also tracking the HAI rates. Based on the results, the CQI project team can refine the intervention and plan for better implementation and scope across the facility. Conclusively, nurses use continuous quality improvement (CQI) to ascertain the highest quality of care for patients. Through CQI, nurses and other healthcare providers can address issues like HAIs and enhance patient experience in their settings.

References

Hill, J. E., Stephani, A. M., Sapple, P., & Clegg, A. J. (2020). The effectiveness of continuous

quality improvement for developing professional practice and improving health care outcomes: a systematic review. Implementation Science, 15(1), 1-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-020-0975-2

McCalman, J., Bailie, R., Bainbridge, R., McPhail-Bell, K., Percival, N., Askew, D., … & Tsey,

1. (2020). Continuous quality improvement and comprehensive primary health care: a systems framework to improve service quality and health outcomes. Frontiers in Public Health, 76. DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2018.00076