Discussion Post: Leading Organizations for Quality Improvement Initiative

Your organization has recently discovered there have been too frequent errors in medication distribution. After launching an investigation in the matter, and discovering the reasons for the errors, your organization is ready to launch a quality improvement initiative. What might this initiative entail? What is included, and how will it assist in eliminating these errors?

The purpose of the Quality Improvement (QI) Plan is to provide a formal ongoing process by which the organization and stakeholders utilize objective measures to monitor and evaluate the quality of services-both clinical and operational-provided to the patients. The QI Plan, which often addresses general medical behavioral health and oral healthcare and services, defines and facilitates a systematic approach to identify and pursue opportunities to improve services and resolve identified problems (Health Resources and Services Administration, 2011).

For this Discussion, review the Learning Resources. Then, reflect on how adverse events impact your organization and/or nursing practice. Consider the use of quality improvement initiative in the error rate, using scholarly articles to analyze.

To Prepare:

1. Review the Learning Resources for this week, and reflect on the types of quality improvement (QI) initiatives that might be most relevant to your healthcare organization or nursing practice.

2. Select a QI initiative, you are most familiar with, that has received support from your senior leaders in your healthcare organization or nursing practice.

3. Consider how adverse events are handled in your healthcare organization or nursing practice. Reflect on how this may impact the public-as well as the internal-perspective on healthcare quality.

4. Find a scholarly article or one from the public press, published within the last 5 years, that recounts a serious error. Reflect on this error, and consider how it may relate to your healthcare organization or nursing practice.

Task

Post a brief explanation of the QI initiative you selected, and why. Be specific. Explain how adverse events are handled in your healthcare organization or nursing practice, including an explanation of how this may impact both public and internal perspectives on healthcare quality. Then, briefly describe the error rate from the article you selected, and explain how this may relate to your healthcare organization or nursing practice. Be specific and provide examples.