Читать книгу The Quality Improvement Challenge - Richard J. Banchs - Страница 28

Improvement projects are launched to address patients’ expectations for quality and service; frontline staff and providers’ workflow issues; a department’s strategic initiatives; or disappointing performance and undesirable outcomes. If you clearly know what problem you are going to address, then you are ready to move to the next steps. But if you are not sure where to focus your efforts, start with the right questions.

Scan the environment, listen to people, and observe the work environment around you. Start by asking yourself these four questions:

1 What is important to my patients? What are their needs and expectations? What do they want from the care we provide? Where does our performance fall short?

2 What are the needs of providers and staff? What do they need to succeed? What are their challenges? What are their “pain points”?

3 What is my area struggling with? What are the issues affecting us (unit or department)? What are the strategic initiatives planned for this year? Where do we fall short in our performance?

4 What is my hospital struggling with? What are some of the hospital’s strategic initiatives, and how do these translate to my daily work? What issues affect our hospital (healthcare organization)?

The answer to these and other questions may give you an insight into what improvements are most urgently needed. Sometimes a quality improvement (QI) project idea may come from your own daily experience. What are you struggling with? What are the challenges and barriers that prevent you from doing your work? What can be improved in your work environment?

Your personal experience, the needs of your patients, and challenges of the frontline staff and providers are all sources of project ideas. If you are a healthcare leader, all ideas should be considered: top‐down from supervisors and leaders and bottom‐up from providers and frontline staff. Anyone should be able to suggest an improvement idea. Timely, constructive feedback should be provided by leaders to those who forward an improvement idea, regardless of the final decision to move ahead with a QI project.