Quality Improvement Initiative
Description of Quality Initiative
The quality improvement initiative I selected is healthcare staff education on the essence of patient monitoring before the administration of medicine. This initiative is relevant as it is directly related to the QI improvement gap in my organization, which is medication management lacking consideration for physical monitoring such as vital signs, weight, and blood levels for illicit drugs. Education on the need for patient monitoring will remind the nurses and other healthcare providers of the basics of healthcare provision that they may have forgotten or undermined during their practice. The education initiative will differ from a training program in that it will be a one-time thing for the participants, lasting only a few hours.
Handling of Adverse Events in an Organization
My organization appreciates that adverse events are normal in healthcare provision and any other practice in different sectors. This appreciation leads it to watch out for potential adverse events for their prevention. When unwanted events do occur, the healthcare organization encourages the staff to report them so that investigations can be done to find out the cause and prevent their occurrence in the future. In this case, the mental health care facility encourages a just culture and ensures that care providers are not victimized when they make mistakes. According to Barkell and Snyder (2021), a just culture balances system and individual accountability and people perceive that they will be handled fairly if they report mistakes done during care provision. When an organization responds to adverse events fairly and systematically the internal and external stakeholders perceive that the care organization provides quality care as it cares for its staff even when mistakes are made and is not thrown into disarray in the process.
Error Rate from Article
The article I selected is one from Mulac, Taxis, Hagesaether, and Granas (2020), who state that medication errors still occur and cause patient harm despite the global efforts towards their prevention. According to the article, most medication errors occur during administration, accounting for 68% of the errors and the leading types of errors were dosing, omission, and wrong drug errors at 38%, 23%, and 15% respectively (Mulac, Taxis, Hagesaether and Granas, 2020). Furthermore, according to the article, 62% of the errors were harmful, resulting in severe harm or fatal outcomes (Mulac, Taxis, Hagesaether, and Granas, 2020). The error rates from the article relate to my healthcare organization as they reflect the adverse outcomes it may experience if the QI initiative is not undertaken. The mental health patients who visit the facility may suffer severe harm or even die because of the lack of patient monitoring before drug administration by the care provider in the organization.
References
Mulac, A., Taxis, K., Hagesaether, E., & Granas, A. G. (2020). Severe and fatal medication errors in hospitals: findings from the Norwegian Incident Reporting System. European Journal of Hospital Pharmacy.
Barkell, N. P., & Snyder, S. S. (2021, January). Just culture in healthcare: An integrative review. In Nursing Forum (Vol. 56, No. 1, pp. 103-111).
