The impact of an innovative curriculum to introduce patient safety and quality improvement content.

BACKGROUND: The Fuld Fellows Program provides selected pre-licensure nursing students with a foundation in the science of patient safety, quality improvement and leadership through coursework and a mentored experience working on a quality improvement project. We evaluated this program's impact on Fellows' patient safety competence and systems thinking. METHODS: Cohorts I-VI (n = 116) completed pre-post program evaluation that included measurement of patient safety competence through the Health Professional Education in Patient Safety Survey (H-PEPSS) and systems thinking using the Systems Thinking Scale. Pre- and post-program H-PEPSS and Systems Thinking Scale scores were compared using the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test. The Fellows were compared to non-Fellows on patient safety competence and systems thinking using t-tests. RESULTS: Patient safety competence on all H-PEPSS scales improved from baseline to end of program: teamwork (2.6 to 3.1), communication (2.1 to 3.2), managing risk (2.2 to 3.3), human environment (2.8 to 3.7), recognize and respond to risk (2.7 to 3.6), and culture (2.9 to 3.8) (p < 0.05). The Fellows, in comparison to the non-Fellows, reported a significantly higher (p < 0.05) mean change score in five of the six H-PEPSS subscales. Fellows' mean systems thinking score increased from 66 ± 7 at baseline to 70 ± 6 at program completion (p < 0.05), this mean post completion score was significantly higher than the non-Fellows reported mean STS score of 62 ± 7. CONCLUSION: The Fuld Fellows Program effectively facilitated patient safety and quality improvement and systems thinking learning among pre-licensure nursing students. This program can serve as a model for integrating quality and safety concepts into health professionals' curricula.

Preparing Patient Safety Advocates: Evaluation of Nursing Students' Reported Experience With Authority Gradients in a Hospital Setting.

In this post hoc review, prelicensure students' observations of communication interactions were evaluated to assess the students' ability to recognize ineffective professional communication due to an authority gradient and the resultant impact on the patient, other team members, and self. By expanding curricular content to include structured communication strategies using simulation, interprofessional education, and debriefing, students' advocacy skills should improve and potential patient safety risks should decrease as authority gradients are effectively challenged.

Development and validation of the Johns Hopkins Disruptive Clinician Behavior Survey.

Although the negative impact of disruptive clinician behavior on quality health care delivery has gained attention recently, little systematic effort to address this issue has been reported. To facilitate empirical research to reduce disruptive clinician behaviors, an assessment tool (Johns Hopkins Disruptive Clinician Behavior Survey [JH-DCBS]) with 5 discrete subscales was developed using a 2-step design. First a pool of items was generated from focus group studies and the literature, and then a psychometric evaluation of the survey was conducted with a sample of clinicians (N = 1198) practicing in a large urban academic medical center. The results indicated that the tool was reliable (Cronbach α = .79-.91), showed high content validity (Content Validity Index = .97), and had significantly high correlations with theoretically selected variables. The study team concluded that the JH-DCBS provides a valid empirical assessment of disruptive behavior. Assessment results may be used to design strategies to improve the health and safety of practice environments.

A clinical academic practice partnership: a clinical education redesign.

The clinical academic practice partnership (CAPP), a clinical redesign based on the dedicated education unit concept, was developed and implemented by large, private school of nursing in collaboration with 4 clinical partners to provide quality clinical education, to explore new clinical models for the future, and to test an innovative clinical education design. An executive steering committee consisting of nursing leaders and educators from the school of nursing and the clinical institutions was established as the decision-making and planning components, with several collaborative task forces initiated to conduct the work and to accomplish the goals. This article will describe methods to initiate and to organize the key elements of this dedicated education unit-type clinical model, providing examples and an overview of the steps and elements needed as the development proceeded. After 18 months of implementation in 4 different nursing programs in 4 different clinical institutions, the clinical redesign has shown to be a positive initiative, with students actively requesting CAPP units for their clinical experiences. Preliminary findings and outcomes will be discussed, along with nursing education implications for this new clinical redesign.

An organizational assessment of disruptive clinician behavior: findings and implications.

This study investigated registered nurses' (RNs) and physicians' (MD) experiences with disruptive behavior, triggers, responses, and impacts on clinicians, patients, and the organization. Using the Disruptive Clinician Behavior Survey for Hospital Settings, it was found that RNs experienced a significantly higher frequency of disruptive behaviors and triggers than MDs; MDs (45% of 295) and RNs (37% of 689) reported that their peer's disruptive behavior affected them most negatively. The most frequently occurring trigger was pressure from high census, volume, and patient flow; 189 incidences of harm to patients as a result of disruptive behavior were reported. Findings provide organizational leaders with evidence to customize interventions to strengthen the culture of safety.

Hospital RNs' experiences with disruptive behavior: a qualitative study.

Disruptive behavior in healthcare has been identified as a threat to quality of care, nurse retention, and a culture of safety. A qualitative study elicited registered nurse experiences with disruptive clinician behavior in an acute care hospital. A conceptual framework was developed to provide a structure for organizing and describing this complex construct that includes 4 primary concepts: disruptive behaviors and its triggers, responses, and impacts.

The medication administration process: patients' perspectives.

Medication administration in acute care settings is a high-volume and potentially an error-prone activity. This descriptive exploratory study investigates patients' perspective about this process and provides insights for nurses who want to deliver patient-centered care. Findings indicate that patients are acutely aware of nurses' involvement in the medication process; however, the extent patients want to be involved in the process is variable.

Improving patient safety and communication through care rounds in a pediatric oncology outpatient clinic.

The last 25 years have brought major changes to our Outpatient Pediatric Oncology Clinic: a 400% increase in patient volume, a 7-fold increase in chemotherapy infusions, and a major shift in the care delivery system. These changes and a recent sentinel event provided the impetus to improve communication by instituting daily care rounds with an interdisciplinary team. Care rounds have become the standard of practice in this clinic and are perceived to have improved communication and patient safety.

Quest for the ideal: a redesign of the medication use system.

Medication use systems in hospitals are complex and prone to error. A redesign of the system using idealized design methodology is a starting point in preventing patient harm from medication errors. An interdisciplinary team identified system properties, proposed and gathered feedback on an ideal design, and established a structure to plan changes in the system and monitor their impact.

Interdisciplinary medical, nursing, and administrator education in practice: the Johns Hopkins experience.

Reforming graduate medical, nursing and health administrators' education to include the core competencies of interdisciplinary teamwork and quality improvement (QI) techniques is a key strategy to improve quality in hospital settings. Practicing clinicians are best positioned in these settings to understand systems issues and craft potential solutions. The authors describe how, in ten months during 2004 and 2005 the school of medicine, the school of nursing, and an administrative residency program, all at Johns Hopkins University, implemented and evaluated the Achieving Competency Today II Program (ACT II), a structured and interdisciplinary approach to learning QI that was piloted at various sites around the United States. Six teams of learners participated, each consisting of a medical, nursing, and administrative resident. The importance of interdisciplinary participation in planning QI projects, the value of the patient's perspective on systems issues, and the value of a system's perspective in crafting solutions to issues all proved to be valuable lessons. Challenges were encountered throughout the program, such as (1) participants' difficulties in balancing competing academic, personal and clinical responsibilities, (2) difficulties in achieving the intended goals of a broad curriculum, (3) barriers to openly discussing interdisciplinary team process and dynamics, and (4) the need to develop faculty expertise in systems thinking and QI. In spite of these challenges steps have been identified to further enhance and develop interdisciplinary education within this academic setting.

Emergency department: improving patient satisfaction.

A process improvement initiative aimed at decreasing emergency department (ED) length of stay (LOS) and thereby improving patient satisfaction was implemented. Any attempt to improve ED LOS requires intense focus on the goal and involvement of many departments of the hospital. While the LOS targets were not met, decreasing the LOS to the achieved levels resulted in the highest levels of patient satisfaction ever achieved and sustained in the ED.