Effective Quality Improvement Teams

The quality improvement plan involves risk reduction of the fall rate of the hospital patients. Recently, the fall rate among the hospital patients has been quite high. However, if proper preventive measures are taken, the rate can be reduced, which will decrease the hospital stay of the affected patients and foster their quick recovery. Falls in the hospital have led to the increased healthcare expenditure and prolonged stay of the patients at the health facility. Therefore, a quality improvement team is important for enhancing fall risk reduction in the health facilities. The mission of such team is to reduce hospital fall rate by a great margin through engaging quality improvement committee. The indicator to be measured is the decreasing number of hospital fall cases within the health facility. Records from the hospital will be utilized to provide the required data. The desired outcomes include reduced hospital stay, falls, injuries from falls, and cost of the hospital stay.

Any quality improvement team should be able to make appropriate decisions to reduce the risk facing the organization. In order to create a well-balanced quality improvement team, at least one member from clinical leadership, technical expertise, day-to-day leadership, and project sponsorship experts will be engaged. The team will be composed of the chief executive officer (CEO), medical director, nursing staff, physician assistant, community health worker, peer mentor, and pharmacy staff. Thus, the members will be able to identify the risk factors while reducing the risk through intervention programs (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2013).

The CEO will be responsible for giving directions on the stance of the QIT and the health facility in general. While empowering the initiative, the CEO may provide financial assistance and sponsorship of the project. Medical director will have the role of ensuring that the patients are well-informed about all the aspects of their stay in hospital and other health-related issues and receive proper medication. In their turn the nursing staff, physician assistant, community health worker, and the peer mentors should also educate the patients while pointing to the consequences. All team members should equal to allow equal contributions to the initiative.

There are several strategies that can be applied to ensure that members actively participate in the improvement process. They include such tools as the model for improvement (MFI), workflow mapping, benchmarking, PDSA (plan do study act) cycles, and feedback mechanisms, which can be employed to ensure success of the QIT. Thompson (n.d.) justly emphasizes that the team leader should encourage QIT members to own the project. Therefore, the members of the team under consideration will feel part of the project, thus, actively contributing to it. Every member is expected to communicate their ideas openly while listening to others. The team leader will give equal chance to all members to speak and contribute. It will help to neutralize the extra assertive and self-confident members who may dominate meetings. The leader will also encourage membership by pinpointing the advantages of the initiative to the QIT and other members of the health care facility. It will encourage them to continue the initiative while enrolling new members.

Having clear goals set by all members of the team ensures that every team member is responsible for the achievement of the aim. The theory of change (ToC) that allows participation of team members is to be used in the project. It will help to promote the desired social and health change at the facility. Through the ToC, every member will have clear roles and responsibilities that should also motivate them to work towards achieving the goal as a team. The theory ensures that all members participate in the project to have the desired outcome. According to the theory, assigning roles makes every member part of the team while pointing to their individual importance. The team leader should also ensure that the team is interdisciplinary. In addition, heshe should use such tools as flowcharts to enable the members understand their core business and process data and encourage individual participation. Other suggested methods include relaxed atmosphere for meetings, having each member deal with their preferred area of expertise, assigning duties and giving praises to members. The ToC may limit its application as it proposes linear model that can predict the outcomes. The QIT may experience unpredictable challenges that can affect the outcomes of the initiative. The theory should have options of mid-project changes and reviews of the desired outcomes. It also suggests that the team starts working from the outcomes backwards as opposed to the much successful “so that” procedures that move forward to the desired outcomes.

QIT members may not be well-informed, thus, lacking the concentration effort needed. Lack of focus during the meetings can result in poor performance of the QIT; therefore, at the meetings, some useful strategies should be offered and discussed. Poor understanding of the issues under discussion can reduce the success rate of the initiative. Language barriers, cultural perspectives, and cohesion can also affect the performance of the team.

QIT should be composed of interdisciplinary members to enhance its success. To be able to reduce hospital fall rate by a big margin, all members have to feel part of the QIT and fully contribute to the project. Distribution of duties and responsibilities ensures that all members are busy with the initiative, thus, leading to success of the project. It is also recommendable to use tools such as MFI and PDSA to enhance the achievement of the objectives.