Quality Improvement Final Project
Goal:
To assess a clinical issue that is the focus of the Quality Improvement Project.
Evaluate the clinical project.
Putting it all together for the final Quality Improvement Project.
Content Requirements:
A description of the clinical issue to be addressed in the project.
A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis for the project. Analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to the quality improvement process.
An outline of the action plan for the project.
An assessment of clinical issue that is the focus of the quality improvement project.
Discuss stakeholders and decision makers who need to be involved in the quality improvement project.
Discuss resources including budget, personnel and time needed for the quality improvement project.
Discuss potential strategies for implementation and evaluation.
Submission Instructions:
The work is to be clear and concise, and students will lose points for improper grammar, punctuation and misspelling.
The final project is to be 8 – 12 pages in length and formatted per current APA, excluding the title, abstract and references page.
Incorporate a minimum of 9 current (published within the last five years) scholarly journal articles or primary legal sources (statutes, court opinions) within your work.
Journal articles and books should be referenced according to the current APA style (the library has a copy of the APA Manual).
Quality Improvement Project – Sepsis Action Plan
Student’s Name:
Course Name:
Institution Affiliation:
SWOT Analysis of Sepsis
SWOT analysis would involve analyzing thee strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of sepsis as a clinical issue in the healthcare industry. Consequently, this would serve to form the basis of providing foundation for an action plan for quality improvement of sepsis. One of the biggest strengths regarding sepsis is that its screening has aided in saving many lives today. According to data from the National Library of Medicine, sepsis screening has aided in reducing the mortality rate (Kim & Park, 2019). Reduced mortality rate has been attributed to the early identification and treatment of sepsis. Undeniably, sepsis screening has been enhanced through use of tools such as the systemic inflammatory response system (SIRS). Further, these sepsis screening tools have enhanced efficiency and effectiveness in terms of detecting sepsis.
For these reason, morbidity and mortality rates related to sepsis have massively reduced thus improving the overall efficiency of health systems globally. However, despite the strength, there exist weaknesses regarding the clinical issue of sepsis. For instance, one of the biggest weaknesses has been the issue of non-compliance especially of bedside nurses completing the sepsis screening. Bedside nurses refer to healthcare professionals who handle the personal healthcare issues of patients. In this scenario, this has always led to delays in utilization and positive impacts of sepsis bundle. Delayed sepsis bundle would then increase the risk of progression to septic shock. It is crucial to point out that delayed septic bundle is linked to a more than twofold rise in mortality rates of patients with sepsis after onset. On the flip side, sepsis as a clinical issue has presented numerous opportunities for healthcare professionals, patients and the system itself. First, reducing mortality rates related to sepsis is one of the most significant aspects that can be explored by healthcare professionals globally.
To achieve this, the healthcare system and professionals must leverage on boosting early detection and treatment of sepsis to help save many lives globally (Carr, 2018). On top of this, there opportunity to develop a fast-acting treatment plan for sepsis without considering the source of the infection has present itself to the global healthcare system. Additionally, there still exist threats when dealing with the clinical issue of sepsis. Patients in today’s healthcare system are at an increased risk of sepsis. A classic example would be patients undergoing foley catherer as this would increase the risk of sepsis (Melzer & Welch, 2017). On top of this, patients would be at risk of an infection that can then lead to sepsis and this can also be attributed to time spent by a patient in hospital.
Action Plan for Quality Improvement
It would be essential to integrate the systemic inflammatory response system (SIRS), as an analytical tool bas it has proven to be effective in undertaking of screening of patients to effectively and efficiently detect and identify sepsis. Over time, SIRS has remained to be one of the most commonly utilized sepsis screening tool when identifying septic patients. Additionally, it is important apart from using SIRS, healthcare professionals ought to diversify their analytical frameworks when detecting and identifying sepsis (Ebai, 2017). Apart from focusing all efforts and actions plans in the healthcare environment, there is need to also focus on the outside. Specifically, there is need to accelerate sessions and training to parents and communities in terms of sepsis awareness and this can be accelerated through use of social media as a means of communication. Eventually, sepsis awareness would aid in timely and effective response to sepsis thus saving many lives in the short and long run. To sum up, investing in research and development of technologies aimed at boosting detection and identification of sepsis would be a game changer in improving health outcomes of patients in the long run.
References
Carr, C. F. (2018). Tools to Increase Compliance and Decrease Mortality Due to Sepsis. The University of Southern Mississippi https://aquila.usm.edu/dnp_capstone/104/
Ebai, D. B. (2017). Screening Tools Used by Nurses to Identify Sepsis in Adult Patients. https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/137994/Ebai_Babeh%202.pdf?sequence=1
Kim, H. I., & Park, S. (2019). Sepsis: Early recognition and optimized treatment. Tuberculosis and respiratory diseases, 82(1), 6-14. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6304323/
Melzer, M., & Welch, C. (2017). Does the presence of a urinary catheter predict severe sepsis in a bacteraemic cohort? Journal of Hospital Infection, 95(4), 376-382. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2017.01.003