Exam 21: Quality Improvement and Patient Safety

An interdisciplinary team is evaluating the hospital's care of patients admitted with a myocardial infarction (heart attack) compared to national standards. The team analyzes the hospital's clinical indicator, which would be: (Select all that apply.)

A nurse is assisting with the delivery of twins. The first infant is placed on the scale to be weighed. The physician requests an instrument stat. The nurse turns to hand the instrument to the physician, and the infant falls off the scale. When evaluating the incident, the nurse and her manager list contributory factors such as the need for two nurses when multiple births are known, and the location of the scale so far from the delivery field. These nurses are performing a(n):

A nonprofit organization that distributes to governmental agencies, the public, business, and health care professionals knowledge related to health care for the purpose of improving health is the:

Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) proposed a process for quality improvement with steps known as "PDCA." When explaining the steps to a group of nurses interested in improving the process of medication reconciliation for heart failure patients with high rates of recidivism, the instructor states:

In differentiating between early efforts of quality assurance and present-day quality improvement efforts, which statement is correct? Quality assurance:

A group of nurses is presenting the importance of high-quality care during a systemwide meeting of medical-surgical nurses. They point out a finding of the Quality Chasm that:

During the night, a patient fell in the bathroom and sustained a hip injury. The patient was very upset because of being unable to attend a granddaughter's wedding in 2 days. The team looked at the process and determined that the patient had been medicated with a narcotic, had urinary urgency so had not taken the time to put on shoes, failed to turn on the light because the door to the hall let in some light, and stumbled over a towel that had been placed to collect water leaks caused by construction that was in progress to replace damaged sinks. Which factor was a special cause variation?

A nurse educator is explaining the differences in early efforts at quality improvement for health care compared to today's quality assurance efforts. She asks participants to move items that related to quality assurance to a list on the right leaving items related to quality improvement on the left. Which items would be moved to the right under "Quality Assurance"? (Select all that apply.) Quality Improvement Quality Assurance

A nurse is asked to "float" to a telemetry floor and is to place a patient on telemetry monitor. The nurse is unfamiliar with placement of EKG leads and would consult which type of chart to learn the correct placement?

A nurse is removing a saturated dressing from an abdominal incision and must cut the tape to remove the dressing. The nurse accidentally cuts the sutures holding the incision, and evisceration occurs. In quality improvement, this incident is best identified as a:

The surgical team arrives in the operating room and one member states, "Everyone stop. Let's identify the patient and operative site. Now does anyone have any questions or concerns?" This process is known as:

The number of IV site infections has more than doubled on a nursing unit. The staff determine common causes include the site is cleaned using inconsistent methods, dressing frequently becomes wet when patient showers, IV tubing is not changed every 48 hours per protocol, and inadequate hand washing of RN prior to insertion. A bar graph demonstrates the frequency in descending order, with 80% of infections being attributed to inadequate hand washing. The quality tool used is a:

An organization's emergency preparedness task force meets to discuss how it should react in case of a terrorist attack and develops a disaster evacuation plan that details how each department will assist individuals in reaching safety. This type of diagram is referred to as a:

Quality is defined by the ____________.

Patients with heart failure have extended lengths of stay and are often readmitted shortly after they have been discharged. To improve quality of care, a type of "road map" that included all elements of care for this disease and that standardized treatment by guiding daily care was implemented. This road map is referred to as a(n):

Each month data on admission assessments that are based on the following standard are entered: "All patients will be assessed by an RN within 2 hours of admission." The target goal for this standard is 97% compliance. Data are displayed on a graph that shows number and time of admission assessments and compliance variation limits. This pictorial representation is a:

Regardless of the term used to describe high-quality health care, the focus of quality is:

According to the Quality Chasm report:

A hospital is concerned that the number of medication errors has increased significantly in the past year. A project revealed four causes of medication errors. The above chart was used to help staff and administration know where to focus efforts to reduce errors. Which process improvement tool is used in this situation?

The staff on a nursing unit notes that patient satisfaction varies from month to month. They plot the degree of patient satisfaction each month for 1 year to determine when the periods of greatest dissatisfaction are occurring. The staff uses which type of graph?