Please answer in APA 7: How does continuous quality improvement (CQI) play a role in patient safety and patient outcomes?
Provide an example from your clinical experiences or clinical setting that used CQI to improve patient outcomes. (For reference I am an Operating Room Nurse)
Unit 3 Discussion Board
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Unit 3 Discussion Board
Continuous quality improvement (CQI) is a process that is adopted in healthcare settings to improve the quality of the healthcare services provided. CQI has been linked with an improvement of patient health outcomes, reduced hospital admissions, and overall patient safety and satisfaction in clinical settings (Hill et al., 2020). Approaches used in continuous quality improvement provide decision-making tools and feedback which can be used in responding to complex relationships between variables in the clinical settings.
CQI directly affects patient safety and outcomes as it ensures improvements in the system processes, work operations, compliance with laws and regulations, and an improved work environment (Hill et al., 2020). Through CQI the healthcare professionals can collaborate in decision making and implementation of a proposed change relying on observation on the clinical settings, feedback from patients or supervisors, or better still from data collected from the health facility.
For example, in the operating room setting, a continuous quality improvement project can be conducted to lower the incidence of infections. According to Allegranzi et al. (2018), surgical site infections are the second most common infections in the US and Europe. Therefore a CQI directed to the reduction of the infection of the surgical site is likely to result in improved patient safety and patient health outcomes. The rate of surgical site infections can be minimized through the incorporation of infection prevention strategies like hand preparation, the administration of antibiotic prophylaxis, and proper ventilation of the theatre. A continuous quality improvement on the above example provided is likely to result in improved patient safety and an improvement of health outcomes among patients exposed to surgical interventions.
References
Allegranzi, B., Aiken, A. M., Kubilay, N. Z., Nthumba, P., Barasa, J., Okumu, G., … & Berenholtz, S. M. (2018). A multimodal infection control and patient safety intervention to reduce surgical site infections in Africa: a multicentre, before–after, cohort study. The Lancet infectious diseases, 18(5), 507-515.
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.