Quality and safety of patients care

Describe one patient care scenario where a safety or quality issue is apparent. Explain the details surrounding the scenario and the impact of the problem.

Select either the DMAIC or PDSA model, and describe how the model could be applied to address the specific issue in your case scenario. Explain how this process would improve patient-related and organizational outcomes.

Discussion Post

One patient care scenario where safety is apparent on hand hygiene among nurses in the oncology unit. At times healthcare providers and particularly nurses may not adhere to the required hand hygiene practices and this increases the probability of transmitting micro-organisms to patients and surfaces. The oncology unit consists of patients whose immunity is low and hence lack of proper adherence to hand hygiene practices may lead to poor health outcomes, including increased mortality rate (Ahmed et al., 2020). Hand hygiene is the cornerstone to prevent hospital-acquired infections within a hospital setting. This is because hand hygiene reduces the colonization of hands with transient flora that can be transmitted from healthcare providers to patients and then from patient to patient (Roshan et al., 2020).

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The PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act) can be used to implement a program aimed to improve hand hygiene compliance among nurses in the oncology unit. The first step would be to plan and identify the reasons for the lack of hand hygiene adherence (Demirel, 2019). This includes planning for the resources required to implement the program. The next stage is “Do” which includes educating nurses on the importance of hand hygiene and how to appropriately perform hand hygiene; placing posters with diagrams and texts on how to perform hand hygiene on ward areas and nursing stations and supplying alcohol hand gel on all required and accessible points. The “study” phase involves examining if the change was adopted (Demirel, 2019) and, in this case, it involves observing if nurses are performing hand hygiene practices as required. The last phase is the “Act” that involves sustaining the appropriate hand hygiene practices. Successful implementation of an intervention aimed to improve hand hygiene can reduce the rate of HAIs, improve patient satisfaction and lead to better health outcomes.

References

Ahmed, J., Malik, F., Memon, Z. A., Bin Arif, T., Ali, A., Nasim, S., Ahmad, J., & Khan, M. A. (2020). Compliance and Knowledge of Healthcare Workers Regarding Hand Hygiene and Use of Disinfectants: A Study Based in Karachi. Cureus, 12(2), e7036. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.7036

Demirel A. (2019). Improvement of hand hygiene compliance in a private hospital using the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) method. Pakistan journal of medical sciences, 35(3), 721–725. https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.35.3.6

Roshan, R., Feroz, A. S., Rafique, Z., & Virani, N. (2020). Rigorous Hand Hygiene Practices Among Health Care Workers Reduce Hospital-Associated Infections During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of primary care & community health, 11, 2150132720943331. https://doi.org/10.1177/2150132720943331