Improving Quality of Health Care Services
Must bold each area with points beside it. Besides the initial paragraph must have at least be 6 paragraphs
Improving Quality of Health Care Services - due by Day 7 of Week Three
Select one initiative used to improve quality and/or safety of health care. Summarize the initiative and provide your views on the effectiveness of this initiative and how it can be improved.
Write a 2- to 3-page paper using the following guidelines and evaluation criteria. Use a minimum of five references from the professional nursing literature in the assigned course readings and other references in the Walden Library. If they are relevant, you may use one or two professional web sites in addition to the literature references.
Begin the paper with a brief paragraph that provides an overview of the assignment and its purpose. There is no separate heading for this paragraph; the heading is the same as the title of the paper. This will be about 2-3 sentences. The last sentence in this paragraph is a sentence that begins "The purpose of this paper is to ¨. This paragraph is worth 20 points.
Use the following headings for the rest of the paper.
A quality and/or safety initiative - 20 points
Describe a quality and/or safety initiative currently being used in any health care setting. This will be a one-paragraph overview of the main points of the initiative.
Reasons for the initiative - 40 points
Discuss at least two reasons supporting why this initiative was developed. This will be one paragraph discussing each of the two reasons.
Strengths and limitations of the initiative - 40 points
Discuss one strength and one limitation of the initiative in having an impact on the quality or safety of health care. This will be one paragraph for the strength identified and one paragraph for the limitation.
Role of nursing - 20 points
Discuss a contribution that nursing could make to improving the effectiveness of this initiative. This will be one paragraph.
Summary - 10 point
Provide a one-paragraph summary of the main points in the paper.
Format/style
Proofread your paper as described in the tips for success in this course and correct any typos, grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax, or APA format errors before submitting your paper in the Dropbox. You can have up to 30 points deducted from your grade for this assignment for these types of errors, or for not using at least the minimum number of required professional literature references.
Total points for assignment = 150 points.
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Improving quality and safety of health care
Despite the substantial spending on health care in the United States, the country continues to be plagued with quality problems in its healthcare. Becher and Chasin (2001) pointed out that patients usually suffer harm owing to 3 kinds of quality problems: (i) when patients are not given beneficial health services. (ii) When patients undergo procedures or treatments from which they would not benefit. (iii) When patients are given apt medical services, but those appropriate services are offered poorly, which exposes the patient to increased risk of preventable complications. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive, in-depth discussion of one initiative used to improve quality and/or safety of health care, and encompasses the reasons for the initiative are discussed in addition to the strengths as well as limitations of the initiative and the role of nursing.
Safety initiative: Improving Hand Hygiene Practices
Hand Hygiene (HH) is a top patient safety initiative at the health care setting. Health care providers including all health care workers in the hospital practice good hand hygiene. In essence, good HH implies that the healthcare provider washes his/her hands using water and soap, or with the use of a foam product to clean the hands or making use of a waterless, alcohol-based hand gel (Erasmus et al., 2009). The management of the health care organization encourages every staff member therein to wash their hands properly at the hospital’s convenient hand washing stations as they exit or enter the hospital, as well as before and after handling any patient. In general, the hospital has taken measures to improve the compliance of healthcare personnel to hand hygiene guidelines by providing hand rub with an alcohol-based solution
Reasons for the hand hygiene initiative
It is disconcerting that the hospitalization of a patient could result in hospital acquired infection (HAI) and research studies have shown that poor hand hygiene by health care workers is a causal factor (Erasmus et al., 2009). Hand washing and maintaining proper hand hygiene is one of the best defenses against infection. The best way for stopping the spread of germs in the hospital or any health care setting is basically for the health care workers including physicians and nurses, as well as medical students to wash their hand before and after contact with a patient. The Hand Hygiene initiative is being carried out at the health care organization in order to prevent the spread of illnesses and infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), HH can prevent infections which are potentially deadly from spreading from patient to the health care worker and from one patient to another (2014).
Strengths and limitations of the initiative
Strengths: Keeping hands clean at all times by maint...