2023 reply1 Hello Maria Patient centered care is a great way to improve the quality of care being received

reply1

Hello Maria,

Patient-centered care is a great way to improve the quality of care being received. Not every patient responds the same way to the same techniques. Taking that into consideration, being more aware of each patients feelings of the conditions they are in, can really help to guide the practice put into place thereafter. Experience can help with this as well, as it gives the nurse more ideas of different ways to handle one situation. 

reply2

Quality Improvement is looked at by leadership for the purpose of making processes in health care more efficient and therefore, save money (McEwen, M., & Willis, 2019).  It takes data and statistical measures to investigate where performance can be improved.  Essentially, if something isn’t working, more than likely it’s taking resources that can be spent elsewhere or used in a better way. 

In the emergency department when I think of quality improvement, what comes to mind is re-admittance rates or “frequent flyers”.  There is an alert on the patient’s chart during triage that notifies nurses if the patient has been to or in the hospital in the last 30 days and for what purpose.  We don’t want people to keep coming to the ED for the same reason over and over.  That is an overuse of the ED and abuse of resources. To prevent overuse and abuse, many MD’s collaborate with case managers and social workers on behave of the patient to provide follow-up resources and even assistance with a Primary care Physician.  Although these things are set in motion, many people miss their follow-appointments and come back to the ED. 

Leaders must look at the numbers and see where there can be improvements made.  Most often, these improvements need to be taught to the staff so they can implement changes. Leaders should be forthcoming with the goals and able to encourage change by the staff members.