NURS 8302 Discussion Identifying Practice Gaps for Quality Improvement

Sample Answer for NURS 8302 Discussion Identifying Practice Gaps for Quality Improvement Included After Question

NURS 8302 Discussion Identifying Practice Gaps for Quality Improvement

 Post a brief explanation of how you would identify a quality improvement practice gap in your practice or organization. Describe a potential quality improvement practice gap you might use for your DNP project, and explain why. Then, explain at least two types of tools and/or methods you might use to address this quality improvement practice gap, and explain why. Be specific and provide examples. 

A Sample Answer For the Assignment: NURS 8302 Discussion Identifying Practice Gaps for Quality Improvement

Title: NURS 8302 Discussion Identifying Practice Gaps for Quality Improvement

How to Identify a Practice Gap

            Quality improvement gaps are identified in the author’s organization by events, monthly and quarterly matrix, and adverse events that might occur that lead to a root-cause analysis (RCA). Leadership is made aware of the quality improvement gaps chair of the committees who present the monthly or quarterly findings to leadership. A gap in practice is a discrepancy between wanted outcomes and the obtained outcomes. A gap in practice is an opportunity to make changes to improve. One of the quality improvement gaps that currently impact healthcare is compassion fatigue (CF) and burnout (BO).

Quality Improvement Practice Gap

            In a demanding, complex work environment, compassion fatigue (CF) and burnout (BO) are familiar among healthcare professionals. Compassion, as defined by Dinc and Ekinci (2019) as “A deep awareness of someone’s suffering and acting or feeling of motivated to help” (p.193).  Caring is synonymous with nursing. As a well-known pioneer in nursing, Florence Nightingale provided care to patients in a compassionate, caring manner (Charlie, 2020). According to Dinc and Ekinci (2019), compassion is an individual’s attitude, attentiveness, and sensitivity. In contrast, compassion fatigue (CF) is defined as the lack of caring due to emotional and physical exhaustion, stress, and uncertainty (Dinc&Ekinci, 2019).  During the author’s frontline experience, she was able to identify these gaps in practice.

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Healthcare professionals such as nurses seek to care for others while lacking self-care. Nurses in healthcare are at high risk for CF, as they are frequently exposed to traumatic, emotional, and stressful events. Nurses are overwhelmed, emotionally and physically exhausted, and fearful of lack of supplies, lack of staff, and lack self-care and enjoyment of their purpose; unfortunately,  CF leads to healthcare professionals leaving their profession(Fukumori et al., 2020; Watts & Thorne-Odem, 2020). It is essential to identify the causation and mitigate the issues, reduce staff resignations, and improve retention, patient and staff satisfaction, outcomes.  The author performed a literature review to help define and develop the proposed research question: “Is there evidence that suggests education intervention towards compassion fatigue compared to no education, increases knowledge and awareness of compassion fatigue amongst healthcare professionals?”

Two Types of Tools/Methods to Address the Quality Improvement Gap

            The two types of tools/methods the author will use to address the quality improvement gap are Lean Six Sigma and Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA). Lean Six Sigma is a hybrid of two methodologies the work together well (Catalyst, 2018; Sipes, 2020). This hybrid method finds ways to remove the waste while improving processes to maintain consistency. Lean Six Sigma works well together to enhance the quality of care and improve outcomes. They are different in their methods but work well together. Six Sigma is metric-driven, while lean focuses on eliminating waste. Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) is another tool to address the issue of a quality improvement practice gap. The PDSA four phases work together to improve quality, patient safety, care, and patient satisfaction, which focuses on translating ideas into actions to improve processes (Slootmans, 2018).  By utilizing these methods, the author will address the practice gap, improve patient outcomes, and enhance communication while making changes using evidence-best practice and mentoring.

References

Catalyst, N. (2018). “What is lean healthcare?” NEJM Catalyst. http://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10/1056/CAT.18.0193

Dinc, S., &Ekinci, M. (2019). Turkish adaptation, validity and reliability of compassion fatigue short scale. PsikiyatrideGuncelYaklasimlar, 11, 192-202

Fukumori, T., Miyazaki, A., Takaba, C., Taniguchi, S., &Asai, M. (2020). Traumatic events among cancer patients that lead to compassion fatigue in nurses: A qualitative study. J Pain Symptom Manage, 59(2), 254-260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2019.09.026

Slootmans, S. (2018). Project Management and PDSA-Based Projects (pp. 175–198). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71042-6_8 Watts, S. A., & Thorne-Odem, S. (2020). Nursing yourself away from burnout and compassion fatigue to resilience and joy at work. Nursing Made Incredibly Easy!, 18(6), 6-8. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NME.0000717684.70292.43

This is an outstanding work Andretta. The methodologies of identifying quality improvement gap in health care organization have been clearly identified. I concur with your post. Ideally, identification of quality improvement gap should be followed by addressing the gap and determination of quality of the service. However, evaluating the perceptions and expectations of patients concerning health care delivery and areas that need improvement remains a great challenge (Javed & Ilyas, 2018). Usually, surveys have been used to understand quality improvement gaps from the perspective of the patients and other stakeholders. However, another important methodology that organizations and providers can use is to compare the perceived and the expected quality of service and identify the gaps between them, utilize the feedback from the stakeholders to enhance quality, and evaluate the real experiences of health care (Lu et al., 2020). As service quality is increasingly becoming a critical aspect of corporate strategy in health care system, an approach of measuring the perception and understanding the gap between perception and expectation can be important in quality improvement initiatives (Dopeykar et al., 2018).

References

Dopeykar, N., Bahadori, M., Mehdizadeh, P., Ravangard, R., Salesi, M., & Hosseini, S. M. (2018). Assessing the quality of dental services using SERVQUAL model. Dental Research Journal, 15(6), 430. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6243813/

Javed, S. A., & Ilyas, F. (2018). Service quality and satisfaction in healthcare sector of Pakistan—the patients’ expectations. International journal of health care quality assurance. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJHCQA-08-2016-0110

Lu, S. J., Kao, H. O., Chang, B. L., Gong, S. I., Liu, S. M., Ku, S. C., & Jerng, J. S. (2020). Identification of quality gaps in healthcare services using the SERVQUAL instrument and importance-performance analysis in medical intensive care: a prospective study at a medical center in Taiwan. BMC Health Services Research, 20(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-020-05764-8