While there are few opportunities within the organization to learn and evaluate their strategies through continuous learning and training, assessing their performance against high-performing benchmarks such as enhancing team communication, pre-surgical discussion, briefing, effective preoperative assessment and procedures, and implementing a checklist can help provide better outcomes. Strict adherence to infection control procedures can reduce the risk of unsafe surgical procedures, reduce the readmission rate, and improve overall patient satisfaction (Balance et al., 2023). These opportunities for learning and surgical collaboration among the team lead to better hygiene and safer surgical procedures.
However, there are a few uncertainties that may require more attention regarding the extent to which the checklist would be effectively implemented and prevent errors; human factors such as stress, burnout, and workload may impact the performance, and other factors such as patient medical complications, age, and other comorbidities may influence the outcomes. Addressing these issues and capitalizing on opportunities can have significant positive effects.
Strategy Using PDSA
The Plan-Do-Study-Act model is the most suitable for this purpose as it involves an iterative cycle of planning, implementing, evaluating, and refining the changes to improve processes. Step one is to plan, which is initiated by describing the issue of unsafe surgical care procedures leading to postoperative complications, increased surgical site infection, and patient readmissions. This step aims to improve patient satisfaction while decreasing these risks. The planned strategy to reduce the postoperative complications and surgical site infection was to increase the adherence to infection control and preoperative management protocols that can mitigate the risk with proper assessment, team collaboration, discussion, and planned surgical intervention while incorporating comprehensive simulation-based training and education (Ling et al., 2019).
The second step of the model is to implement the plan strategies (Do), such as conducting training sessions, implementing infection control protocols, using the preoperative approach, and collecting data on the outcome measures. The aim is to communicate the plan to nursing staff and other stakeholders involved and educate them regarding the need. The third step is to analyze (Study) the gathered data, trends, feedback, and surveys to understand the success of the plan and the need for improvement. The last step is to Act; based on the gathered data regarding the utilization of the set protocols, the program is analyzed, and strategies are changed based on the continuous monitoring and evaluation of the plan. Training and education will disseminate information about secure implementation of best practices, while feedback loops, collaborative projects, and team training will encourage interaction and cooperation.
Conclusion
The current report was designed to address the organization’s functions, processes, behaviors, and outcome measures that can provide patient safety and quality improvement while educating staff and implementing strict infection control protocols and preoperative strategies that can help to provide better collaborative care for the patient, improving the organization’s standards of care. Therefore, nurse leaders may need to encourage a culture of safety and quality through effective communication, transformational leadership, and strict adherence to protocols.
References
Andersen B. M. (2018). Prevention of postoperative wound infections. Prevention and Control of Infections in Hospitals: Practice and Theory, 377–437. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99921-0_33
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