Posted: August 11th, 2023

Building the Case for Healthcare Improvement: Addressing Patient Safety Issues

Assessment 1 Instructions: Building the Case for Healthcare Improvement
Content
Present a five-minute PowerPoint presentation with voice-over to introduce your patient safety issue, the supporting research, and possible intervention.
Introduction
Evidence-based practice (EBP) is the process of searching for, appraising, and integrating the most relevant, best research evidence to answer a clinical question or address a healthcare challenge. The best research evidence is weighed along with patient preferences and values, organizational data, and professional expertise. For this assessment, you will learn about each of the six steps of EBP in detail and acquire a working knowledge about EBP as a problem-solving approach used in many healthcare settings.

Of note, there are many published processes regarding the steps of EBP. Some processes have more steps and some have fewer. However, the fundamental concepts are the same. For the purposes of organization, we will use the six-step EBP process below in the courseroom:
1. Ask the clinical question.
2. Acquire the best evidence.
3. Apprise the evidence.
4. Implement the evidence.
5. Evaluating the outcomes.
6. Disseminate findings.
Introduction
The purpose of this assessment is to identify your patient safety issue and further explain how the safety issue was identified, the impact on safety, and/or descriptions of the problem from clinical experts within your institution. Your goal is to identify internal resources or do a “needs assessment.” The internal resources will not require citation/references. You are welcome to draw from personal experiences and use creative liberty to make your case from an internal perspective.

Scenario

Throughout the course, we will focus on a patient safety issue of your choice and work through all six steps of the evidence-based practice (EBP) process. The first step is to “Ask the burning clinical question in PICOT format,” which you will find later in this assessment in the section titled “Mastering the First Step in EBP: PICOT.”
Now, let’s imagine that you are the Director of Clinical Operations and Nursing Excellence at a major metropolitan medical center encompassing many entities, including hospitals and outpatient medical centers. You report directly to the Chief Nursing Officer and serve as the front-line leader for clinical operations, including serving as a clinical resource for all nursing staff levels in both the acute-care and ambulatory settings.

It is your responsibility to ensure that the best practices and protocols are implanted throughout the medical center. Your primary goals are to focus on problems in healthcare safety and how to solve them with evidence-based interventions as a quality improvement (EBP/QI) project.

Instructions

Present a 5-minute PowerPoint presentation with voice-over to introduce your patient safety issue, the supporting research, and possible intervention, using the following steps:
7. Consider patient safety issues that you have heard about in your practice, the medical field, the media, or your coursework. Select a patient safety issue to research throughout this course.
 Explain the patient safety issue that needs improvement.
 Describe the problem in detail using creative liberty or give specific examples of the issue in practice.
8. Locate and review two examples of internal or practice site sources of evidence that support the need for change to address the patient safety issue.
 Describe how the sources were obtained, including a timeframe or number of patients involved.
 The internal resources will NOT require citations and references.
9. Locate and review two sources of evidence that the safety issue exists outside of your institution.
 We call these external resources. This information can come from peer-reviewed literature, clinical practice guidelines, consensus statements, local or national databases, national organizations, Joint Commission, and/or hospital compare (CMS). The external resources will require citations and references.
 Utilize Capella library resources to guide your research, including the library guide and an appointment with a librarian.
 Explain how these literature resources support the need for change related to the patient safety issue.
 Describe how each source is directly related to the patient safety issue.
10. Determine the organizational priority by describing why this patient care safety problem is of significant concern to stakeholders, patients, or community members. Give specific examples.
11. Describe your desired patient outcomes from a proposed intervention and the potential impact of the quality improvement project. Use at least one citation from literature to support the intervention.
12. Again, the patient safety issue and intervention or interventions identified for this assessment will also be used for all the assessments in this course, so take a look at those assessments now. Ensure the problem and interventions you select will work for the other four assessments.
13. Create 8-10 slides that reflect the issue you have selected, the evidence, and the possible interventions. You may use the following headings for your slides:
 Title.
 Name, course information.
 Presentation Outline.
 Patient Safety Issue.
 Internal Evidence of Patient Safety Issue.
 External Evidence of Patient Safety Issue.
 Organizational Priority for Intervention.
 Describe why problem is significant to stakeholders and give specific examples.
 Propose a Quality Improvement Project.
 Describe interventions and desired patient outcomes and potential organizational impact.
 Include at least one citation from literature to support proposal.
 References.
14. Record voice over for your slide presentation using PowerPoint features or Kaltura.
15. Submit PowerPoint slide deck with slide notes in PDF or Microsoft Word format and a video recording of your 5-minute presentation.
Additional Requirements
o 8-10 PowerPoint slides with slide notes.
o Five-minute voice-over recording of presentation slides.
o Minimum two external resources.
o Reference slide with APA citations.
o Submit slide deck, slide notes, and video recording.
Competencies Measured
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:
o Competency 1: Apply the steps of the evidence based practice process to a health care challenge.
 Identify a health care safety problem that needs to be improved.
 Describe why this health care safety problem is a concern to stakeholders, patients, or community members and should be an organizational priority.
 Explain your desired patient outcomes and the potential impact of the quality improvement project.
o Competency 5: Interpret the results and practical significance of health care data analyses in the evidence-based practice process.
 Document two external sources from literature of evidence that support the need for change.
o Competency 6: Produce original written work, in compliance with the Capella Writing Standards, which is a creative synthesis of information from credible sources.
 Conduct a professional presentation using well-designed slides and slide notes.
 Apply APA formatting to in-text citations and references.

Resources: Selecting a Safety Issue for Your Assessments
Content
• The assessments in this course will build upon one health care safety issue by using the Iowa Model of Evidence-Based Practice. This process is not intended for you to identify your topic for Capstone implementation, but rather to guide you through the educational process. Therefore, you may choose a health care safety issue that is of interest to you rather than determining a need of a potential practicum site.
Suppose you cannot determine a health care safely issue from your own clinical experiences. In that case, you may reference The Joint Commission’s 2021 Hospital National Patent Safety Goals [PDF] document for ideas on current patient safety trends. To use this resource, click on the clinical setting chapter you are interested in and open the “Simplified Version.” You may take creative liberty to expand on the backstory of your chosen health care safety problem.
Here are a few patient safety issue examples. These examples help you identify a health care safety problem and are NOT to be used for the purpose of the assessments in this course.
o Example A: You are having lunch with a friend who is an advance practice nurse who Helps with hospital admissions. She tells you that she has admitted three patients this week from Sunnyside Long Term Care facility, which is under the umbrella of the Mercy Medical Center. Later that afternoon, you Question Assignment admission data and note a 13% increase in hospital admissions associated with dehydration over the last 12 months. You wonder to yourself, “What assessment tools are present in the literature for earlier detection of dehydration in older adults?”
o Example B: It has been brought to your attention that there were three surgical procedure mistakes in the last month. In one case, a woman came in to have her right ovarian cyst removed, but her appendix was removed instead. In another case, a patient underwent an orthopedic procedure intended for a different patient with the same last name. The third case involved operating on an incorrect site where the patient had a spinal fusion of L4-L5, and the intended location was L2-L3. You wonder to yourself, “What additional interventions are present in the literature to prevent surgical errors?”
o Example C: The recent survey of patients’ perspectives indicated a severe decrease in patient satisfaction on several medical floors. Further investigation leads you to believe this drop is due to noise pollution. You wonder to yourself, “How could we effectively measure noise on those units, what is the acceptable national level of noise at a particular time, and what evidence-based interventions have worked in similar settings?”

Building the Case for Healthcare Improvement: Addressing Patient Safety Issues

Evidence-based practice (EBP) serves as a vital process in healthcare, involving the integration of research evidence, patient preferences, organizational data, and professional expertise to address clinical queries and healthcare challenges. This assessment will delve into the six-step EBP process: asking clinical questions, acquiring evidence, apprising evidence, implementing evidence, evaluating outcomes, and disseminating findings. This article provides an overview of the assessment’s requirements, steps, and competencies measured.

Step 7: Identifying the Patient Safety Issue

To initiate this assessment, selecting a patient safety issue is paramount. This issue can be drawn from personal experiences, coursework, media, or clinical practice. The chosen issue must be presented, with detailed descriptions or examples of its occurrence. For instance, a patient safety issue could revolve around the increase in hospital admissions due to dehydration in older adults.

Step 8: Internal Evidence of Patient Safety Issue

Two internal or practice site sources of evidence that endorse the need for change must be located and reviewed. These sources, although not requiring formal citations, should describe how they were obtained, including patient involvement or the timeframe. These internal resources aid in building a case for addressing the patient safety issue.

Step 9: External Evidence of Patient Safety Issue

Two external sources of evidence are necessary to substantiate the patient safety issue beyond the institution. These sources, from peer-reviewed literature, clinical guidelines, or databases, require proper citations and references. The sources should explicitly correlate with the patient safety issue and elucidate the necessity for change.

Step 10: Organizational Priority for Intervention

It is crucial to explain why the selected patient care safety problem concerns stakeholders, patients, or the community. Tangible examples should highlight the significance of this issue and establish it as a priority for intervention.

Step 11: Desired Patient Outcomes and Potential Impact

Describing the desired patient outcomes resulting from a proposed intervention is pivotal. The potential impact of the quality improvement project must be explored. At least one citation from literature should be incorporated to support the proposed intervention’s viability.

Steps 12-15: Creating the Presentation

Utilizing the gathered information, an 8-10 slide PowerPoint presentation is constructed. The slides should contain essential sections: Title, Course Information, Presentation Outline, Patient Safety Issue, Internal Evidence, External Evidence, Organizational Priority, Proposed Quality Improvement Project, and References.

Competencies Measured

This assessment aims to evaluate specific competencies. Firstly, it assesses the ability to apply the EBP process to a healthcare challenge, including identifying and describing a health care safety problem, explaining its concern to stakeholders, and outlining potential patient outcomes and project impact. Moreover, it evaluates the capability to interpret and document external sources of evidence supporting change. Lastly, the assessment appraises the proficiency in producing original written work, complying with Capella Writing Standards, and designing a professional presentation with appropriate APA formatting.

Conclusion

The assessment entails a comprehensive exploration of a patient safety issue, employing evidence-based practice to devise potential interventions. By adhering to the outlined steps and competencies, healthcare professionals can effectively present a compelling case for healthcare improvement, aligning research evidence, stakeholder concerns, and patient outcomes to foster optimal healthcare delivery.

References

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