Quality Improvement In Nursing

Quality Improvement In nursing, patient care and safety is the main goal. Quality improvement is one way to help ensure that patient care and safety remain the number one goal in healthcare. Quality improvement (QI) is the process in which quality of patient care is continuously monitored for effectiveness. All disciplines of the healthcare team should be involved in QI to ensure the best outcome. “The major premises of QI are as follows: focus on organizational mission, continuous improvement, customer orientation, leadership commitment, empowerment, and collaboration/crossing boundaries, focus on process, and focus on data and statistical thinking” (TAYLOR 334). There are several components to QI, including principles, methods, and tools.

It means the best possible health outcome given the circumstances and resources, centered on patient care. Quality is measured in several ways, such as, patient satisfaction, how long it took the patient to discharge, any hospital acquired complications, what treatments patient has received during their hospital stay, and status of patient at discharge. All of these components help decide the quality of

This approach is more individual based. “A key aspect of quality assurance is systematic measurement: monitoring processes, with a feedback loop for error prevention” (CITE, indian name). QA includes activities and programs intended to assure or improve the quality of care in either a healthcare setting or program. This concept includes assessment of quality of care; identification of problems in the delivery of care; designing activities to overcome these deficiencies; and follow-up monitoring to ensure effectiveness of corrective steps. QA programs enable nursing to be accountable to society for the quality of nursing care provided. “Unlike quality assurance, quality improvement is internally driven, focuses on patient care rather than organizational structure, focuses on processes rather than people, and has no end points” (TAYLOR). QI is the process of collecting and using valid data to understand current level of quality, identify gaps between actual quality and expected quality for that setting, introduce changes in the care system, and frequently measuring the effect of those changes on health outcomes and system performance.

QI Processes and