Discussion: Quality and Safety

A patient is prescribed an antibiotic for an illness caused by a virus. The patient is allergic to this antibiotic and has a severe adverse reaction that is life-threatening. If you were a leader or manager in the hospital in which this occurred, would you understand what aspects of quality and safety were at issue here? Would you be able to identify this as a problem of overuse, underuse, or misuse? What would your responsibilities be in this situation?

This is just one example of a scenario related to safety in a healthcare setting. Errors in quality and safety happen every day in healthcare organizations. Quality and safety remain critical issues for healthcare leaders and managers as well as patients and other stakeholders today. Because healthcare leaders and managers hold matters of life and death in their hands, it is imperative that they be vigilant in matters of quality and safety, and understand that quality might be perceived differently depending on who you ask. Therefore, it is important that healthcare leaders consider the perspectives of stakeholders.

To prepare for this discussion:

• Carefully review your Learning Resources. View the two media pieces: Incident in the ER: Part I and Incident in the ER: Part 2. Consider how both healthcare managers handled the incident in both situations. What did the two individuals do wrong? What did they do right to ensure better quality and safety in the future?
• Select one of the two case studies provided to discuss: “Door to Balloon (Percutaneous Coronary Intervention [PCI]) —Case for Chapter 7,” or “On Being Transparent.”
• Seek additional resources to support your Discussion from one of these website resources on healthcare quality:
  • Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/
  • Institute for Healthcare Improvement http://www.ihi.org/ihi
  • The Joint Commission http://www.jointcommission.org/

By Day 4

Post a comprehensive response to the following:

• Describe how issues of quality of care and safety might be viewed from the perspective of each of the following:
  • A patient
  • A healthcare provider
  • A healthcare leader or manager
• Describe the similarities between these perspectives.
• Describe the differences between these perspectives.
• Explain the role of a healthcare leader or manager in addressing quality and safety challenges in the case study you chose. Then, provide a specific example of a strategy that might help ensure future quality and safety by protecting patients from quality and safety errors.