Joint Commission journal on quality and patient safety / Joint Commission Resources
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Jan 2013
Multicenter StudyA cross-sectional study on the relationship between utilization of root cause analysis and patient safety at 139 Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers.
Empirical evidence is limited that root cause analysis (RCA), an event analysis tool used in health care to evaluate the systemic factors that lead to adverse events, improves patient safety. A cross-sectional study was conducted to examine the relationship between RCA and patient safety. ⋯ Large, high-spending VAMCs conduct more RCAs per year than smaller, low-spending facilities. VAMCs that do more RCAs develop more corrective actions. VAMCs that complete fewer than four RCAs per year have higher rates of postoperative complications. It is unclear if RCAs are associated with a functional patient safety program or directly improve patient safety.
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Jan 2013
The changing nature of ICU charge nurses' decision making: from supervision of care delivery to unit resource management.
Recent findings that variations in nursing workload may affect inpatient outcomes now highlight nurse workload management and the need for an updated analysis of the role of the charge nurse (CN). ⋯ The role of ICU CNs appears to be continuing to evolve, now encompassing unit resource management in addition to supervising care delivery. Effective support tools, together with education that would enhance communication and resource management skills, will be essential to CNs' ability to support unit resilience and adaptability in an increasingly complex environment.
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Jan 2013
Editorial CommentPatients as reviewers of quality and safety.
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Jan 2013
A mixed-methods analysis of patient reviews of hospital care in England: implications for public reporting of health care quality data in the United States.
In the United States patients have limited opportunities to read and write narrative reviews about hospitals. In contrast, the National Health Service (NHS) in England encourages patients to provide feedback to hospitals on their quality-reporting website, NHS Choices. The scope and content of the narrative feedback was studied. ⋯ NHS Choices represents the first government-run initiative that enables any patient to provide narrative feedback about hospital care. Reviews appear to have similar domains to those covered in existing satisfaction surveys but also include detailed feedback that would be unlikely to be revealed by such surveys. Online narrative reviews can therefore provide useful and complementary information to consumers (patients) and hospitals, particularly when combined with systematically collected patient experience data.