Archive for February, 2012
AHAP Conference opportunities
The Association for Healthcare Accreditation Professionals (AHAP) is hosting its 6th Annual Conference May 10, 2012 – May 11, 2012 in Orlando, FL. It offers so many amazing opportunities to save money, get expert advice, and show off your hospital a bit. I should also note that if you’re one of the first 50 paid registrants you’ll receive a free full-day ticket to any Walt Disney World® Theme Park*! Download the online brochure to learn more.
So what is it and why am I talking about it? The 6th Annual AHAP Conference brings together survey professionals from across the country to discuss solutions and best practices to achieve continual survey readiness and compliance with ever-changing standards and regulations.
What are the opportunities?
- Accreditation Specialist Boot Camp.
- Presentation of the first annual Accreditation Professional of the Year award
- Unique roundtable discussion with representatives from HFAP, DNV, the American Heart Association, and The Joint Commission
- Exciting new poster event featuring research and best practices from your peers. Find out how to submit a poster and save 50% on your registration.
- Learn about:
- Regulatory changes in 2012 and top RFIs: Staying ahead of The Joint Commission and CMS
- What accreditation professionals need to know about Life Safety Code®
- To certify or not to certify? Seeking The Joint Commission disease-specific certifications
- Making the switch from The Joint Commission to DNV: One hospital’s experience with both surveys
- Understanding tracer methodology and the survey process
- A practical approach to policy management
- Suicide Risk: Solutions to rapid assessment, Environment of Care, and documentation issues
- Understanding hospital recognition programs for optimal cardiovascular and stroke care
*Offer ends March 8th.
Ask your staff: How can we earn your trust?
Every time I explore a quality improvement initiative with a hospital for Patient Safety Monitor Journal, I always ask two questions:
- What was your biggest challenge?
- What advice would you give to other hospitals?
Especially as of late, the answers revolve around just culture. Quality directors, nurse managers, patient safety professionals, CNOs all tell me the biggest challenge is staff trust and buy-in; the key to success is involving them in the process. We all know the key to improving is knowing what’s wrong, but unless there’s trust between the organization and the staff, you won’t find out that information.
The most recent AHRQ Culture of Safety survey – Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture: 2012 User Comparative Database Report – leads me to believe perhaps the knowledge of how to improve culture and safety is there, but it’s not yet in practice to the fullest extent.
This is a big survey, including data from more than a half million healthcare staff from more than 1,000 hospitals, and deserves a good look:
Teamwork within a unit was strong; 80% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed to that sentiment. Generally, staff felt that management supported them and a culture of safety, and that the organization was including systems meant to support staff and reduce errors. To me this says that the talk is there: Staff members are aware that managers and leadership care about safety, and those systems should support them, not hinder them. Seventy-five percent say that management’s actions show dedication to patient safety; 72% believe the systems are in place to prevent mistakes.
Yet when it comes to reporting or speaking up, staff are still wary. Only 62% felt there was communication openness in their organization, and the lowest scoring domain was nonpunitive response to error, with only 44% positive response to questions related to the subject.
When it gets more specific – and more personal–the rates drop lower. Most interestingly is the difference between these two questions:
- Staff will freely speak up if they see something that may negatively affect patient care: 75% agree/strongly agree
- Staff feel free to question the decisions or actions of those with more authority: 47% agree/strongly agree
To whom staff must speak their concerns seems to be a critical indicator as to whether they actually will. This is certainly an issue with culture. The vast majority of respondents (76%) had direct patient involvement, and 35% were nurses. Considering disparate levels of authority create the team responsible patient care, I find this low response to that particular question quite concerning.
Also noteworthy: exactly half believed mistakes are held against them. It’s no wonder the survey indicates vast under-reporting of adverse events, a claim supported by the recent report by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services.
I think the next step for hospitals is to find out what it will take for staff to trust hospitals. What will it take to get a nurse to report an adverse event he or she was involved in? Or demand a time out be performed to a surgeon?
Such a large shift in thinking might take time, as we all k now in decades past healthcare has been notoriously punitive. Still, perhaps we should start by asking our staff what it will take to earn their trust.After all, involving them has been the key to so many other instances of quality improvement success.
Cool app to help nurses, but does it foster bad habits?
Robert Freeman, a registered nurse at Beth Israel Hospital in New York, designed an mobile app for nurses that includes a database of more than 10,000 medical abbreviations and a news feed specific to the nursing profession, according to the New York Daily News. Freeman said the idea for a nursing app came to him when a colleague could not decipher an abbreviation on a patient’s chart. He indicates that nursing students will benefit the most from using the app as a learning tool, but that it will also improve efficiency and productivity for all nurses by quickly answering queries.
Freeman spent three months researching the information necessary to design “Nurse Net,” his free app. The app includes tools such as the Credentialer, which clarifies the abbreviations for various certifications and credentials used by health professionals, and the Abbreviation Assistant, which interprets abbreviations found on medical charts. “Nurse Net” became available in the Apple Store in November and has been downloaded more than 12,000 times since then.
I wonder how patient safety and quality professionals (yes, you) felt about these kind of apps. Personally, I worry about a nurse who, instead of clarifying an abbreviation (which may be a “do-not-use” abbreviation!) with the physician, consults an app. I would always prefer communication between humans when possible rather than consulting a third source, even if it is a bit of effort. Also, speaking directly with the physician might help avoid future issues with that physician’s notes. Is consulting the app a workaround here? And don’t forget, an app isn’t responsible for being right; it’s not responsible for being updated, and most importantly, isn’t responsible for keeping your patients safe. It’s a product, like anything else, even if it’s free and developed by a nurse with the best of intentions.
Are we teaching the right thing here? Weigh in below.
