Journal for healthcare quality : official publication of the National Association for Healthcare Quality
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The surgical service at the Philadelphia Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center has been making a continuous effort toward improving efficiency in the operating room. A multidisciplinary task force was created in May 1994 to look at delays in operating room start times for the first case of the day. ⋯ The team discovered that delays were related to system problems in the perioperative process and were not caused by any specific problem. Many of these problems proved correctable, as the statistical analysis shows, and the result was significant improvement in operating room efficiency.
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Assessing clinical performance is difficult. Members of the Nursing Service Clinical Practice Committee at the Carl T. ⋯ This article describes the committee's process of developing and implementing the program and includes a blueprint for competency assessment and selected performance measures for all nursing staff who provide patient care. The approach to competency assessment includes performance measures specific to patients' ages.