Natural Partners to Advance Patient Safety Discussion
Natural Partners to Advance Patient Safety Discussion
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. Natural Partners to Advance Patient Safety Discussion
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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 1, 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). I connected with my director to develop different tools to use each week but added them to the previous tools utilized each week. In week 1, I continued to work without any adjustment as I documented my hours accordingly, so I could evaluate the times I would work for over 40 hours (Appendix B). Natural Partners to Advance Patient Safety Discussion
In the 2nd week, I began to make a list of tasks each morning to organize my day and attempt to plan out my schedule. I was still working past my 40 hours, but I could see some progress. I would note some of the tasks and estimate how long they would take. For instance, when I am supposed to leave by 4.30 pm, I would pause all remaining works that would take more than 30 minutes for the next day. I also recognized 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 needing my hours to give and take a little.
In the 3rd week, I continued to note my tasks for my day and the estimated times, but I added an alarm on my phone for the time I was supposed to leave. As a result, my time improved, but still not at 40 hours. But I can say that my hours were improving. I realized that I needed to set my alarm off daily during the week, so I did not need to reset it. I also moved around some of my agenda items for my days and went to work later so that I could stay later on some evenings and not be exhausting myself and my hours. I noticed that my hours were stacking up, so I always did when it was possible to leave “early” in a shift, which would help me save some of my sanity and improve that balance. Natural Partners to Advance Patient Safety Discussion
In the 4th week, I continued to do everything from the third week, but I added more alarms to my day. First, I set the alarm for the estimated time of my tasks. The intervention would give me a heads up on whether I was taking too long or focusing too much on a “dead in the water” task. That allowed me to complete more tasks on time. I also set a 15-minute alarm for 415pm as my queue to ensure that I finished my tasks with only 15 minutes left of my day. Then my final alarm went off at 4.30 pm.
Each Friday, I would add a tool for my next work week. To see if this would improve my ability to leave work closer to my 40 hours. Through the four weeks, I improved my work-life balance and arrived home with the ability to join my family for dinner in the last 1.5 weeks. In addition, I increased my time with my husband and children and my career’s joy. Natural Partners to Advance Patient Safety Discussion
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.
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. Natural Partners to Advance Patient Safety Discussion
Maintaining the Project’s Long-Term Improvement
Self-improvement projects help in making informed decisions that can impact long-term goals. However, to sustain the improvement’s long-term goal, consistency is needed (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. Natural Partners to Advance Patient Safety Discussion
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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. Natural Partners to Advance Patient Safety Discussion
