Topic 6 Discussion Question Response to classmate-Identify a quality improvement initiative that relates to improving population health outcomes

QUESTION– Identify a quality improvement initiative that relates to improving population health outcomes for a population with which you are familiar. Have these initiatives been successful? Why or why not?

RESPONSE: Topic 6 DQ 1- Irma

A quality improvement initiative that my facility is focused on is Falls Preventions. Patient falls are the leading cause of injuries in hospitals in the United States (Grillo et al., 2019). It is estimated that there are between 700,000 and 1,000,000 inpatient hospital falls every year ( AHRQ, 2018). My facility is no exception. We are a 50-bed hospital and have had a significant number of patient falls in 2020.  Some of the nurse-driven protocols in place included identification of high-risk patients by utilizing yellow gowns and wrist bands, non-slip socks, bed and chair alarms, and lastly, purposeful hourly rounding. While these protocols helped reduce some of the falls, we still incurred a significant amount of falls. After brainstorming with the fall committee, we decided to implement geographic nursing, often referred to as “pod nursing.” Having geographic assignments reduces the distance between patient’s rooms. It helps the bedside nurse stay in closer proximity of the patient to respond to call lights and visualize patients quickly. We also partnered up with our pharmacists to help flag medications that put patients at greater risk of falls. Since we have implemented these additional initiatives, we have seen a more significant reduction in our patient falls. While we are still fairly early in our test of change, these measures appear to be working.  Partnering with pharmacy to identify medications that have a high potential to induce falls brings more awareness to nursing staff and geographic assignments helps to better visualize patients and not have to run from one side of the unit to the other when assignments have more than one fall risk patient.

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). (2018). Fall prevention in hospitals training program. https://www.ahrq.gov/patient-safety/settings/hospital/fall-prevention/index.html

Grillo, D. M., Firth, K. H., & Hatchel, K. (2019). Implementation of purposeful hourly rounds in addition to a fall bundle to prevent inpatient falls on a medical-surgical acute hospital unit. MEDSURG Nursing, 28(4), 243–261.

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE !!

Solution

Response

In the quality improvement plan, you have focused on patient falls in the hospitals, indicating that the other measures include having hourly rounds, use of yellow gowns, non-slip socks, and chair alarms. Despite these nurse-driven protocols, the number of patients falling in the facility remained high, and thus a pod initiative was improvised. According to Morris and O’Riordan (2017), the use of multi-professional and complex interventions can be challenging if the facility has various care settings and different patient populations in the healthcare facility. This could be why they failed, and thus your choice for pod as an intervention method is favorable in reducing the falls. The use of the geographic pods increases general patient surveillance and proximity to the patients, thus reducing patient falls in the facility. According to Gavin & Peterson (2017, pod systems increase the general availability of both nurses and physicians, which may greatly contribute to reduced rates of patient falls. There are 24hr pod systems in some facilities, while in others, the geographical pods are operational during peak hours. Having a 24-hour system may be very effective in reducing patient fall incidences. In measuring the success of the PODs, you can use the number of falls in a certain period to establish the initiative’s effectiveness. The initiative has a high probability of performance in the facility but requires higher amounts of capital and monitoring.

References

Gavin, N., & Peterson, K. (2017). Team-based Pod System Reduces Lengths of Stay for Treat-and-Release Patients. ED management: the monthly update on emergency department management, 29(6), 67-69. https://www.reliasmedia.com/articles/140681-team-based-pod-system-reduces-lengths-of-stay-for-treat-and-release-patients

Morris, R., & O’Riordan, S. (2017). Prevention of falls in hospital. Clinical medicine (London, England), 17(4), 360–362. https://doi.org/10.7861/clinmedicine.17-4-360