31 Jan Once submitted, your assignment

Module 8 Assignment

Scholarly Paper: Quality Improvement Initiative Reducing Patient Falls

Introduction

Nurses are often called upon to work within multidisciplinary teams to improve outcomes promoting quality patient care. For this quality improvement project, you will develop a quality improvement initiative to reduce patient falls within the surgical division of a health care organization.

Begin by reviewing the scenario and graded assignment. This activity builds upon what you have learned in previous modules: leadership and management principles related to communication, health care environments, fiscal/budgetary concepts, quality improvement outcome evaluation, and how these impact safe, quality patient care. It is worth 25% of your final grade.

Outcomes

Module Outcomes

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

Analyze factors that contribute to patient falls within health care organizations. (CO6, SLPO 4)

Apply the PDSA methodology to a quality improvement initiative: patient falls. (CO5, SLPO 6)

Discuss the relationship of an organization’s achievement of national benchmarks to reimbursement. (CO6, SLPO 4)

Discuss the role of the professional nurse in implementing change. (CO2, SLPO 2)

Course Outcomes

The course outcomes addressed in this module are:

CO2: Integrate concepts such as change theory, quality improvement, transformational leadership, and evidence-based practice in the delivery of care. (SLPO2)

CO5: Demonstrate how evidence-based strategies improve patient care outcomes. (SLPO6)

CO6: Incorporate leadership values, skills, and commitment to excellence into professional nursing practice. (SLPO 4)

Scenario for Assignment: Quality Improvement Initiative: Reducing Patient Falls

As a bachelor’s-prepared nurse, you have been asked by the Director of Surgical Services to lead a quality improvement project to reduce the number of falls with injuries within this division of the organization. The director has determined that the surgical division has a rate of 5.0 falls per 1,000 patient days in the first quarter of this year. Three of these falls have resulted in serious injuries. You are to assemble an interdisciplinary team to address this issue utilizing the Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) quality improvement methodology.

I. Team Process

Select the members of your interdisciplinary team and provide rationale for their selection.

Summarize characteristics of a successful team you feel are most critical to achieve your desired outcome and describe the strategies you would use to foster the development of these characteristics.

Discuss the communication strategies you would utilize to establish team relationships required to successfully initiate a quality improvement plan to reduce patients falls with injuries.

II. Identification of the Problem

Compare the rate of falls with injuries within the surgical division to national benchmarks.

Discuss the long- term impact to patients who experience fall(s) with injuries while hospitalized.

Discuss the financial impact of benchmarks on reimbursement from Medicare, insurances and Pay for Performance Program.

III. Application of PDSA Methodology

Address the following three discovery questions

What is the team trying to accomplish?

How will the team know that a change has been effective?

What changes can the team make that will result in improvement?

IV. Quality Improvement Process

Utilizing the PDSA quality improvement methodology, formulate a quality improvement process to decrease patient falls with injuries.

Plan: Formulate a plan for improvement recommendations:

Analyze the problem; evaluate the current literature to predict common factors that contribute to patient falls with injuries that occur during hospitalization.

Select three evidence-based interventions that will be implemented to address patient falls with injuries and include any budgetary considerations that would be needed based on the interventions you selected.

Do: Strategies used to implement the selected evidence-based interventions.

Study: Criteria the team will utilize to determine if the evidence- based interventions have been successful.

Include information that will be analyzed to determine the success of the interventions.

Act: Evaluate if the interventions should be continued and expanded based on the team’s prediction of success with the new actions.

This paper should be submitted in Word .doc or .docx format, be in APA format and be 8-10 pages.

Late Assignment Policy: All assignments are expected to be submitted on time. Prior authorization from your instructor is required for late submissions. The first late submission is accepted up to 5 days late without penalty. A late penalty of five percent per day will be assessed when the first late assignment is submitted after the fifth day. Subsequent late submissions are assessed a late penalty of five percent per day (e.g., -5 points each day on a 100-point assignment, or -2.5 points each day on a 50-point assignment). Extenuating circumstances* are considered without penalty.

No work will be accepted after the final day of the term unless an official course extension has been granted.

*Some types of extenuating circumstances that will be considered are:

a serious medical illness or injury to the student,

a death of an immediate family member,

a significant change in employment or military status that prevents the student from completing the assignment/assessment,

a significant trauma in the student’s life that impairs the student’s emotional and /or physical health,

technical issues that prevent student from completing the assignment/assessment by the designated due date/time.

Documentation may be asked for extenuating circumstances at the discretion of your instructor.

Compose your work in a .doc or .docx file type using a word processor (such as Microsoft Word, etc.) and save it frequently to your computer. For those assignments that are not written essays and require uploading images or PowerPoint slides, please follow uploading guidelines provided by your instructor.

Check your work and correct any spelling or grammatical errors. When you are ready to submit your work, click “Submit Assignment” in the upper right corner. Click on “Browse,” browse your computer, and select your file. Click “Open” and verify the correct file name has appeared next to the Browse button. Enter your comments, if any, in the Comments area. Click on “Submit Assignment.”

Turnitin®

This course has Turnitin® fully integrated into the course dropbox. This means that you should only submit your assignments to the dropbox below. Please do not submit your assignment directly to Turnitin.com.

Once submitted, your assignment will be evaluated by Turnitin® automatically. You will be able to view an Originality Report within minutes of your first submission that will show how much of your work has been identified as similar to other sources such as websites, textbooks, or other student papers. Use your Originality Report as a learning tool to identify areas of your assignment that you may not have cited appropriately. The overall match can be no higher than 15%, with any one match no higher than 2%. You may resubmit your assignment through this dropbox as many times as you need to check to see if you have made improvements, until the due date of the assignment. However, once you have made your first submission, you will need to wait 24 hours after each subsequent submission to receive a new Originality Report. Plan accordingly as you draft your assignment. Once the due date has passed, your assignment submission will be considered final.

Evaluation

This assignment will be graded using the Scholarly Paper: Quality Improvement Initiative Reducing Patient Falls Rubric located on the Course Rubrics page within the Start Here section of the course. Please review this rubric prior to beginning your work so that you ensure your submission meets the criteria in place for this assignment. This assignment is worth 25% of your final course grade.