Quality and safety assignment You are the nurse manager of an ambulatory surgery
ID: 127527 • Letter: Q
Question
Quality and safety assignment You are the nurse manager of an ambulatory surgery unit. Recently, you have seen a sudden rise in the number of surgical patients coming through the unit. Simultaneously, patients, physicians, and other providers have started to complain about long delays during pretesting. In a two to three-page paper, answer the following questions. Would you attempt to fix this problem by addressing it during a staff meeting? Why or why not? (2 pt) Compare how to address this problem using a process team versus using the staff-meeting approach. (4pts) Describe how you would analyze the process. (4pts) Explain which tools are appropriate to use for the analysis. (3pts) Paper is professionally written with two or more references. (2pts)
Explanation / Answer
Yes ,i would attempt to fix this problem during staff meeting as pretesting is one of the important patient care criteria.Doctors often order medical tests before patient surgery ,call as pre-operative test or pre-testing.It includes tests like X-rays,blood and urine samples,heart and lung tests,all kinds of radiology tests should be done.These tests will be helpful and it can show whether a patient need special care or delay or any change in the operation etc.So long delays might affect the patient care and it is risky to prolong duration of the tests.This should be rectified by conducting meetings to staff and should address the TAT delays occuring.It effects both the patient safety and hospital quality.
Process team or quality team is a team which looks after the quality objectives in a hospital.THeir main agenda is to prevent errors and take corrective actions once the error occurs,while staff meetings are to address all kinds of issues that happens in hospitals with or without staff knowledge.Process team is more beneficial rather than staff meetings as contionous monitoring of the techniques and procedures will be done.Prevention is better than cure.So it is better to prevent pretesting errors rather than taking a corrective action by conducting staff meetings.
I would analyse the process by maintaining quality indicators such as turn around time(TAT), in which one can assess the daily monitoring of tests which should be done within the duration given.For example 2-3hours will be the general TAT for urine and blood tests ,so reports should be released within that time including the consultants verification process.There is another criteria by which physicians will be requesting urgent reports by means of a call by phone,so that comes under urgent tests and it should be done without any delay.So continous monitoring by the head of the department or any team who are declared to monitor it can be a better option to fix such issues.