Recruitment and Selection Plan Think back to an experience, either recent or particularly memorable, in securing a position in a healthcare setting. How did you become aware of the position? Was the job description an accurate representation of the duties and responsibilities of the position? What was the interview process like and were there aspects […]

Suppose you wanted to improve something about yourself and your behaviors. Let’s take the example of lowering caffeine intake. How would you begin? According to the principles of CQI, you would approach it in an analytical manner. You would examine the reasons for your caffeine use and begin to track consumption, noting the amount you […]

Medical Errors Not all medical errors carry extreme consequences like those described in this week’s introduction, but they are harmful just the same. Most people have experienced some form of medical error. For example, perhaps you were prescribed a medication that interfered with another of your medications. Perhaps you received an inaccurate diagnosis that led […]

Personal Improvement Project Outline Before engaging in any given project, it is helpful to have a plan. An outline allows you to map out the steps of your project and foresee any challenges you may experience along the way. It also can serve as a checkpoint. As you are collecting and analyzing your data in […]

Personal Improvement Project Topic The aim of the Personal Improvement Project is to experiment with a small change that is under your personal control; collect, analyze, and interpret data; and then reflect on what you have learned from your project about the general challenge of changing something. Through this multi-week project, you will see how […]

Quality Improvement The Institute of Medicine’s six domains of healthcare quality—safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable—provide a framework for assessing quality and guiding improvement. Though broad, the domains can help in generating more specific measures to monitor within an organization.   For example, if a nurse executive were interested in the timeliness of care, […]

Innovation Sharing To engage in thought leadership and advance the profession, nurse executives who conduct research or integrate innovations often share their contributions with the wider nursing community. Methods of dissemination include writing journal articles and presenting at professional conferences such as the American Organization for Nursing Leadership annual conference. Conferences are a stimulating way […]

By nature, healthcare requires an interdisciplinary approach. Patients may have “one doctor” at their primary care practice, for example, but they also engage with the complete team, including nurses, administrative support personnel, and lab technicians. Perhaps a specialist is called in to assist with a particular condition. All along the way, communication must remain open, […]

If you were to set out with the goal of measuring overall quality and safety in a given healthcare organization, where would you begin? Any number of measures contribute to the picture. According to the Donabedian model, quality measures fall into three groups: those that deal with the structure (i.e., the setting in which care […]

Nurse executives may be tasked with evaluating adverse safety events—either individually or as part of an interdisciplinary team—to prevent them in the future. An evaluation may consist of analyzing every step in the patient’s care process to see what did and did not occur. Tools like the process map allow this kind of step-by-step view. […]