The healthcare sector applies different strategies aimed at promoting patient safety and patient outcome. Quality and safety improvements are paramount in every health organization, and the management must utilize specific tools that ensure quality and safety of patients. Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) acts as one of the primary tools that ensure patient safety and patient outcome. According to Hughes (2008), CQI helps in developing clinical practices based on the principle that every process and the occasion has an opportunity for improvement. It ensures the quality of health care by making sure the hospital follows legal regulations and is fully accredited to offer services to patients. On the other hand, CQI ensures patient outcome by giving healthcare organizations an opportunity to develop efficient practices that focus on total patient satisfaction.
CQI programs improve healthcare by identifying issues, implementing and monitoring effective actions. Healthcare organizations that use CQI follow structured processes to determine specific areas within the healthcare facility that need improvement and employing professionals to do the improvement to ensure the safety of patients and promote patient outcome (National Commission on Correctional Health Care, 2010).
Example of a clinical experience/setting that utilizes CQI to improve patient outcomes
The healthcare management has a moral and legal obligation of ensuring high-quality patient care and improved patient outcomes at all times. Managers come up with clinical strategies and settings aimed at improving patient outcome. The managerial impact on the workplace safety is revealed through various evidence-based practices implemented in different healthcare organizations that recommend strategies that managers should follow to improve patient outcome while applying CQI (Parand, Dopson, Renz, and Vincent, 2008). For example, the Massachusetts General Hospital ensures patient safety and outcome through implementing CQI in different clinical settings. The hospital created a patient safety awareness week that educates patients and the staff on various improvements to undertake to promote safety in the hospital. The program focuses on significant improvements on patient safety and outcome, obstacles, recommendations, and future improvements (Massachusetts General Hospital, 2014).
References
Hughes R., G. (2008, April). Tools and Strategies for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety.
In: Hughes RG, editor. Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US. Chapter 44. Retrieved 26 January 2016 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2682/
Massachusetts General Hospital. (2014). Improvement stories. Massachusetts General Hospital:
Quality and Safety. Retrieved from http://qualityandsafety.massgeneral.org/improvement/story.aspx?id=8
National Commission on Correctional Health Care. (2010). Continuous quality improvement.
Retrieved January 26, 2016, from http://www.ncchc.org/spotlight-on-the-standards-24-1
Parand, A., Dopson, S., Renz, A., and Vincent, C. (2014, Sept 5). The role of hospital managers
in quality and patient safety: A systematic review. BMJ Open, 4(9), 1-15.
