The issue of improving the quality of health care delivery and patient safety has been kept on the front burner for the past decades. Due to the crucial importance of changing current health care system, the American Nurses Association (ANA) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) have increased awareness of health care quality and safety issues and elaborated six fundamental aims for improvement.
According to the report "Crossing the Quality Chasm: The IOM Health Care Quality Initiative" (2001), health care always needs to be provided timely, which implies reducing waits as well as "repeated, extensive and sometimes harmful delays for both those who receive and those who give care" (p. 43). I have seen considerable improvements with regard to providing services timely in the health care providing institution I am familiar with for the past two years. I consider this particular improvement to be of paramount importance to the organization, as lives of many patients depend on receiving health care services in due time.
Another aim for improvement is ensuring that health care is patient-centered. Unfortunately, this area still presents a challenge for the organization I am familiar with as health care professionals do not always take individual patient's preferences into consideration. In order to help the organization achieve this aim, as nurse leader, I would conduct special seminars and workshops for nurses to raise their awareness of this aim and ensure that their decisions are always based on patient's individual needs and values.
Alongside with patient-centered health care, another aim for improvement that I would address is ensuring that health care is also safe both for patients and health care professionals. I would introduce a new system of control within the health care organization that would help monitor all the failures and avoid injuries of patients.
References
Six Aims for Improvement. (2001). Crossing the Quality Chasm: The IOM Health Care Quality Initiative, 41-54.
