Measurement of Patient Safety Essay Assignment

Personal Improvement Project Plan

Part One: Project Aim

Quality improvement is essential in the healthcare sector, especially for healthcare facilities and nursing staff. That is because it helps ensure that the healthcare facilities provide the safest and quality healthcare services to the patients while ensuring that nursing staff balances their overall work for productivity and well-being (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2019.-c). Hence, my improvement project aims to improve how I handle and balance my work and home life. Currently, I am working over 40 hours, thus failing to meet my goal of spending quality time with my family. Hence, the table will incorporate my workdays but exclude the weekends. The main reason for prioritizing my work and home life balance is because I have identified that my mental health status has been deteriorating ever since I took over as a Nurse Manager. The situation is overwhelming me, and at some point, I feel regretting the role. Due to such concerns, I am starting to regret my decision to take over my new role as a Nurse Manager. However, I am hopeful I will become more productive in my work and improve my relationships with my husband and children through quality improvement. Therefore, I will incorporate some important components in my project, including process analysis, measurement, changes, and project reflection and application. Measurement of Patient Safety Essay Assignment

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Part Two: Process Analysis

Quality improvement projects require engaging with effective models and procedures to identify the issues that may lead to an adverse effect. For instance, if I do not identify the main issue that influences my work-life balance, it may affect my well-being and relationship with my family. Hence, I will involve a root cause analysis method to identify all loopholes that may influence my quality improvement approach (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2019. -d). Hence, the process I plan to take is to start with an improvement in my daily working hours each week for four weeks. However, as Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (n.d) postulates, process mapping in a project is essential since it helps one identify the process and task owners and outline the expected timelines. As a result, I will build on each step by adding another tool to try and improve my hours. For example, in week one, I will not engage any tool to evaluate how many hours I will work to act as my improvement process control. In week 2, I will write down the estimated time and tasks needing to be covered within that week. For Week 3, I will incorporate an alarm as a prompt to control the hours I work, especially in marking the completion of my hours. Lastly, in week 4, I will add an alarm to help me complete all tasks without delay. That will involve a 15-minute alarm that will notify me 15 minutes before departure. Furthermore, I will ensure that these alarms are on repeat mode to prevent me from forgetting to set them. The process mapping was made possible by collaborating with my director.

Part 3: Measurement

In quality improvement, measurement results in various improvement activities. According to Johnson & Sollecito (2020), measurement helps evaluate current performance, set realistic goals, and monitor improvement interventions and efforts. In that case, I chose to do my data collection by tallying every day’s work for the four weeks (Appendix A). As a result, I connected with my director to develop different tools to use each week but added them to the previous tools utilized each week (Appendix B). In the first week, I planned to work normally without any adjustment since I had already identified ways to document my hours accordingly, thus knowing when I would work more than 40 hours weekly. However, for the second week, I made lists of the work that needed to be covered daily during morning hours. The reason was to ensure that I would perfectly organize my tasks, including an attempt to plan out my schedule. However, it was unfortunate since I was still working for over 40 hours, but I would assess some progress. The main strength of writing down tasks is that I would view them clearly and estimate how long they would take. For instance, when I needed to leave by 4.30 pm, I made it a routine to pause all remaining works that would take more than 30 minutes and schedule it for the next day. Another important factor I noted during my improvement project’s second week is the need to have more consistent alarms and consider my start time and not just my end-of-shift times. That is because various nursing shifts may need more time, thus making it appropriate to adjust my hours accordingly. Measurement of Patient Safety Essay Assignment

In the 3^rd week, I carried forward my second week’s strategy of writing down my tasks daily with their estimated time. After an evaluation, I found it necessary to add an alarm on my phone to keep me alert on when I was supposed to leave. As a result, my time improved, but still not at 40 hours though I saw a promising improvement in my hours. Another thing that I realized was the need to set my alarm daily during the week, so I did not need to reset it. In addition, when I realized that my hours were stacking up, I would leave a bit early to gain some work sanity and improve that balance.

In the 4^th week, I transferred all strategies from the third week but enhanced them by adding more alarms. The first alarm was meant for the estimated time to complete my tasks. The reason for such intervention is that it would give me a heads up on whether I was taking too long or focusing too much on a task that would not meet the expected success, thus enabling me to complete more tasks on time. The other alarm was a 15-minute alarm to 4.15 pm, which I intended to use to help me assess the tasks that I would handle within 15 minutes to my official leaving time, followed by the 4.30 pm final alarm.

The strategy I took to ensure that every week started well was that each Friday, I would add a tool meant for the next week’s work efficiency with the overall goal of improving my 40-hours work schedule. When I assess the four-project weeks, I am confident that  I improved my work-life balance and arrived home early, enabling me to join my family for dinner, especially in the last one and a half weeks. In addition, I increased my time with my husband and children and my career’s joy.

Part 4: Changes

Change is inevitable, so in the 3rd and 4th weeks, I tried to ensure that I worked for less than 10 hours each day. Such adjustment did not only help me to interact with my family but also helped me tackle a lot of work within the limited times since I had time to relax, thus preventing instances of burnout. The only factor I struggled with during that time was ensuring task perfection to prevent revising the tasks, which sometimes takes more time than initial plans. Measurement of Patient Safety Essay Assignment

Part 5: Reflection and Application

Improvement Project Reflection and Lessons

From the personal improvement project, I have learned the need to have a clear project aim before starting any project activity. Another lesson learned is that an improvement project does not happen immediately and that a gradual process is always involved, providing visible improvements.

Maintaining the Project’s Long-Term Improvement

Self-improvement projects help in making informed decisions that can impact long-term goals. However, consistency is needed to sustain the improvement’s long-term goal (Stausmire & Ulrich, 2015). Hence, the changes I made are making a significant impact on my work-life balance. They aren’t difficult to maintain because I can use my phone for alarms, including writing my tasks each morning to improve my ability to function throughout the day and not waste time.

Project Knowledge on Organization and Unit Level changes within Nursing Workplace

The experience gained from the project indicates that collaboration is an effective approach in providing an objective decision toward quality improvement projects. Hence, when carrying out any organization-level and unit-level changes, there will be a need to involve various stakeholders, especially those with expert knowledge about the needed change (Ricciardi & Shofer, 2019). That is evidenced through the input of my director since, without the help, it would be a bit hard for me to identify the essentiality of the root cause analysis.

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References

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (n.d.). Process mapping.  https://digital.ahrq.gov/health-it-tools-and-resources/evaluation-resources/workflow-assessment-health-it-toolkit/all-workflow-tools/process-0

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2019c). Measurement of patient safety. https://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer/measurement-patient-safety

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2019d). Root cause analysis. Retrieved from https://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer/root-cause-analysis

Johnson, J. K., & Sollecito, W. A. (2020). McLaughlin & Kaluzny’s continuous quality improvement in health care (5th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett.

Ricciardi, R., & Shofer, M. (2019). Nurses and patients: Natural partners to advance patient safety. Journal of Nursing Care Quality, 34(1), 1–3.  Measurement of Patient Safety Essay Assignment