NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 3 Improvement Plan in Service Presentation

Name

Capella university

NURS-FPX 4020 Improving Quality of Care and Patient Safety

Prof. Name

Date

Improvement Plan In-Service Presentation

Slide 1: Greetings to all participants of this in-service session, which aims to improve patient safety by implementing a safety improvement plan. The incident at Greenfield Community Hospital demonstrates that patient identification errors are common in healthcare facilities. This presentation examines general steps to improve patient safety, orders of protection, and ways to improve compliance with safety measures regarding nursing personnel accountability.

Agenda and Outcomes 

Slide 2: This in-service session addresses patient identification errors as patient safety issues and their impact on patient outcomes, healthcare efficiency, and organizational costs. The session aims to equip staff with the knowledge and tools to prevent such errors through evidence-based practices. Goals include understanding the issue’s scope, recognizing its relevance and importance to address in our organization, and learning actionable strategies to enhance safety. Participants will explore the proposed improvement plan, develop skills to implement process changes, and understand their role in fostering a culture of accountability, ultimately improving patient safety and reducing associated risks and costs.

Safety Improvement Plan 

Overview of the Current Problem 

Slide 3: Failures associated with patient identification are regarded as severity climaxes predicated on research findings such that they can cause medication mistakes, improper treatment, and erosion of patient confidence (Sheedy & Richard, 2020). These errors occur when patients are labeled incorrectly at phases of treatment because of miscommunication, insufficient identification procedures, or flawed information technology. Such mistakes compromise the patient’s health and lead to more operational problems and health costs. For instance, at Greenfield Community Hospital, a 62-year-old Mr. Robert Hayes arrived for herniorrhaphy surgery but was given records of patient Richard Hale, who came for a colonoscopy at the same time. Even though nobody got harmed, this problem was identified during anesthesia; it created delays and stress as well as the hospital’s protocols were raised into question. The risks have raised the need for effective identification measures and a safety enhancement strategy to enhance patient safety in all healthcare facilities. 

Need to Address the Issue 

Slide 4: To enhance the safety of patients, addressing safety-related issues concerning identification errors is very important if the hospital is to improve patient health outcomes. A qualitative analysis report by the Veterans Health Administration established that 182 of 253 errors were due to patient misidentification. According to the survey conducted with 503 healthcare executives in 2016, 64% of the respondents stated that patient misidentification happens more frequently. It also indicated that hospitals lose about $17.4 million annually in insurance claims through misidentification (Choudhury & Vu, 2020).

Patients can be mistaken for one another during a surgery or treatment process, and this may lead to the administration of the wrong medication, wrong treatment, or procedures, which could be fatal (Sheedy & Richard, 2020). These studies describe the effects of patient misidentification on patient safety and financial performance. This high error rate and substantial losses further stress the importance of amplifying identification management measures and methods for improving the systems that encourage the identification of patients in healthcare organizations and decrease the possibility of further detrimental errors.

Proposed Safety Improvement Plan

Slide 5: The proposed safety improvement plan at Greenfield Community Hospital is on the important patient safety concern of patient identification. The plan aims to enhance effective patient identification, technological integration, and staff education geared toward optimizing safe patient care.

1. The first is implementing a two-identifier policy during patient interactions, greatly reducing identification errors. This policy complements the Joint Commission’s requirement that two patient identifiers be used in admission, medication, procedures, and discharge processes (The Joint Commission, 2022).
2. The second step is adopting a Health Information System (HIS) with barcode scanning technology. A study shows that the use of scanning patient’s wristbands before processes can help in minimizing identification-related adverse events (Wang et al., 2022). Barcode scanning effectively ensures that patient wristbands are linked to information systems, avoiding bandwidth inconveniences and vast differences between the various strips and blunders that manual methods may occasion.
3. Moreover, the plan includes training of the regular staff and routine audits. This would mean that all clinical staff are conversant with patient safety measures, thus adhering to identification measures (Romano et al., 2021). At the same time, audits assist with compliance with such practices. A safety culture encourages reporting and creates a culture that is always learning and constantly improving (Chance et al., 2024). The plan also needs to monitor and evaluate its outcomes so that patient safety initiatives can continuously be adjusted and managed efficiently as a long-term change.

Audience’s Role and Importance 

Slide 6: Nurses are essential in executing the patient identification safety improvement plan at Greenfield Community Hospital. You are on the interface with the patient and play an active role in patient identification processes. You take patient information and help give medications and other procedures, so following the two-identifier process and using barcodes to avoid identification errors is crucial. When the nurses accept the role in the improvement plan, they can minimize the possibility of mistakes that negatively impact patients by focusing on the right identification of patients and safety improvement strategies (De Rezende et al., 2021).

Your participation in training, audits, and escalating any possible errors encourages a culture of safety and accountability. Nurses are also engaged in offering feedback and recommendations concerning the fine-tuning of the protocols so that in the precise execution of the plan, this will continue to be productive and a good fit to needs on the ground. This plan helps nurses as patients are safe, and the workload may reduce the emotional impact of handling preventable harm and working collaboratively (De Rezende et al., 2021). It will make nurses confident because they know that identification standards are very clear, which can improve job satisfaction and overall patient results. Their participation is essential to the safety of the hospital, the protection of its efficiency, and, most importantly, quality patient care.

New Process and Skills Practice

Slide 7: Next, the following activity will be carried out to enable the nursing staff to demonstrate and enhance their understanding of the new patient identification processes as embraced in the safety improvement plan. The activity will be based on using two patient identifiers and bar-code technology. It is to remind staff about correct patient identification and allow them to ask questions in a safe environment. The hands-on simulation activity will enable the nurses to develop skills in a secure, realistic, low-risk setting (Khalil et al., 2023). It allows staff to see how these new practices can be implemented and what should be done if they are not followed. Organized in this manner, this kind of active learning approach helps learners build confidence, decreases the level of uncertainty, and also facilitates teamwork.

Activity

Since the safety improvement plan clearly outlines its basic principles, which include verifying two patient identifiers and implementing the barcode scanning system, it is time to begin the simulation exercise. We have to divide nurses into three small groups. Every group will be assigned a realistic situation where they can exercise patient identification during medication administration, pre-operative procedures, and discharge. 

Slide 8: Scenarios 

• Scenario 1: The patient’s name is Mr. John Walker. He is 58 years old and male. He was admitted to the hospital for heart failure. He has been given diuretics, ACE inhibitors, and other medicines. It is also important to note that the patient is allergic to sulpha drugs. You are about to give Mr. Walker some medicine. What actions will you perform? 
• Scenario 2: Ms. Maria Gonzalez, a 45-year-old female, is planned for a laparoscopic cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal). To enhance her safety, the surgical team must verify her identity before administering anesthesia and undergoing surgery. Ms. Gonzalez was admitted the day before yesterday and is in the preoperative area. What actions will you take?
• Scenario 3: Mr. David Lee, 72 years old, with pneumonia, is ready for discharge. His discharge medication includes an antibiotic and an inhaler. The nurse is responsible for double-checking that Mr. Lee has gotten the right prescriptions, ensuring the discharge instructions are understood, and the medication labels are correct. What actions will you perform?

Notes Section: Predicted Questions and Answers 

Question 1: In what ways will the new patient identification protocols be implemented throughout the entire hospital, including departments? Answer: Policies, regular audits, and continuous training will support adherence to new patient identification policies and procedures. We will write and post compliance policies and procedures and put up compliance posters in the working stations. The audit team will assess the compliance with these protocols by observation of the patient and by chart analysis. Any deviations or non-compliance will be discussed in team meetings so that staff may discuss strengths and weaknesses.

Question 2: What happens if a patient doesn’t want to wear a wristband with a barcode to identify them uniquely? Answer: It is essential to have the patients’ cooperation, but if they refuse, the staff will explain how the wristband will help keep them safe. Nurses should educate patients about using the barcode to avoid administering the wrong medication during surgeries and monitor patient care. If the patient remains adamant, the nursing staff will be forced to involve the charge nurse or practicing physician to possibly devise a way of managing the patient that will not endanger him/her or other patients while following the hospital’s policy to the letter.

Question 3: Can the hospital develop a method for measuring the plan’s effectiveness in encouraging safety over time? Answer: The success of the safety improvement plan will be evaluated through audits that will assess compliance with the new patient identification measures, mainly concerning medication, admissions, and procedures. We will also monitor patient data, including error rates of patient identification. Also, based on the surveyed patients’ experience and feedback, the expectation is that improved patient experience will be noticed. This data will be reviewed and analyzed quarterly, and changes to the plan will be made depending on the challenges or improvements highlighted.

Soliciting Feedback

Slide 9: To ensure that the audience provided feedback on the improvement plan and the in-service session, I would encourage audience participation through an anonymous survey. Participants would be given a set of multiple choice questions and a set of open-ended questions, which will enable the nurses to provide their understanding of the clarity of the content and the feasibility of the changes proposed, as well as their perception of the challenges involved. Also, I will organize a short group meeting to arrange a discussion between nurses so they can speak about their ideas and problems.

To better use the feedback for further improvements, I would aggregate survey responses and discussion points to have general ideas or concerns. For example, suppose nurses are stuck in some procedures and technologies’ evaluations and show confusion or lack confidence in the new device. In that case, I will modify the in-service training program to fill this knowledge deficiency. Feedback would be used to improve the content and engagement to sustain the improvement plan for safety.

Conclusion 

Slide 10: In conclusion, today’s in-service session was on identifying errors and measures to improve safety in Greenfield Community Hospital. Therefore, by enhancing the patient’s and staff’s staffing, practicing a coherent set of behaviors, introducing HIS with barcode scanning, and raising staff awareness, the guideline for safe patient care is forming. These changes are very important and require your active participation and commitment as nurses for this improvement plan to work. This is because everyone is willing to accept responsibility for error-free performance delivery, consequently improving the patient outcome and the quality of the health services.

References

Chance, E. A., Florence, D., & Abdoul, I. S. (2024). The effectiveness of checklists and error reporting systems in enhancing patient safety and reducing medical errors in hospital settings – A narrative review. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 11(3), 387–398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnss.2024.06.003 

NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 3 Improvement Plan in Service Presentation

Choudhury, L., & Vu, C. (2020, January 29). Patient identification errors: A systems challenge. Psnet.ahrq.gov. https://psnet.ahrq.gov/web-mm/patient-identification-errors-systems-challenge

De Rezende, H., Melleiro, M. M., O. Marques, P. A., & Barker, T. H. (2021). Interventions to reduce patient identification errors in the hospital setting: A systematic review. The Open Nursing Journal, 15(1), 109–121. https://doi.org/10.2174/1874434602115010109 

Khalil, A. I., Hantira, N. Y., & Alnajjar, H. A. (2023). The effect of simulation training on enhancing nursing students’ perceptions to incorporate patients’ families into treatment plans: A randomized experimental study. Cureus, 15(8), e44152. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.44152 

Romano, R., Marletta, G., Sollami, A., La Sala, R., Sarli, L., Artioli, G., & Nitro, M. (2021). The safety of care focused on patient identity: An observational study. Acta Bio Medica: Atenei Parmensis, 92(Suppl 2), e2021038. https://doi.org/10.23750/abm.v92iS2.11328 

Sheedy, C., & Richard, S. (2020). Patient identification errors in the operating room. In www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK555511/

The Joint Commission. (2022, August 29). Two patient identifiers – Understanding the requirements. Www.jointcommission.org. https://www.jointcommission.org/standards/standard-faqs/home-care/national-patient-safety-goals-npsg/000001545/

NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 3 Improvement Plan in Service Presentation

Wang, J., Zhao, X., Huang, J., Cao, X., Pan, S., & Jin, H. (2022). A comparative study on the suitability and treatment compliance of an improved wristband wearing method compared with the traditional method. Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/6789292