A nurse who is considering retirement has been asked to develop a quality improvement initiative as part of a late career initiative in order to improve quality in her practice setting (the emergency room)

Question

She has decided to improve quality by promoting a culture of safety. Which one of following ideas is best suited for her plan? a. One person should be assigned the task of completing all documentation required for accreditation.
b. The nurse manager should now inform the charge nurses that they are responsible for safety in the department.
c. When incident reports are completed, a team of front-line care providers should review them and a root cause analysis should be completed.
d. When incident reports are completed, the nurse manager should review them and meet with the staff involved.

Answer 1

c

a. Incorrect: All people involved in the accreditation process should be involved in documentation.
b. Incorrect: Telling charge nurses that they are responsible for safety does not necessarily promote a culture of safety; all team members must be involved in the process.
c. Correct: Health care teams use root cause analysis to investigate the causes of near misses, incidents, and sentinel events. This process improves patient safety because with root cause analysis, the underlying causes of incidents can be identified, allowing the team to learn from the incidents and take actions to avoid similar incidents.
d. Incorrect: A culture of safety embraces the identification of process issues related to incident reports, not penalizing staff members.