Improvement Plan In-Service Presentation

Slide 1: I’ll be proposing an improvement plan in-service presentation to enhance the participation of healthcare workers toward Patient safety. This presentation is geared to deliver knowledge about safety issues about Medication administration errors.

Slide 2: This study aims to create an improvement plan to aid speedy patient recovery without developing complications in the process and the various roles to be played by healthcare workers for an improved patient care plan and health outcome via strategies and skill use. 

Agenda and Outcomes of In-service Training

Slide 3: Asides from attaining total health, the safety of patients is the next best thing and concern for healthcare providers. With the design of this plan, nurses would be trained on safety planning and avoiding mistakes due to factors like oversight in the treatment process. As much as 70% of medical errors happen due to errors in diagnosis. Preventing diagnostic errors requires insight into critical thinking and assessments of reasons for the diagnosis (Celeste, 2019). Moreover, medication errors which are most times a direct extension of diagnosis error can become fatal hence this improvement plan would boost the knowledge base of nurses on oversight in medication administration, best practices on patient care treatment, roles and duties as regards to improving patients’ health as well as additional skills and strategies to hasten the rate of recovery. Finally, monitoring and evaluation of patient health to prevent extreme reactions to medication or treatment processes (Naderi et al., 2019; Rodziewicz et al., 2022).

Outcomes

Slide 4: There is a huge need for training and retraining of nurses and their healthcare institutions to deliver the best possible treatment to patients (Abimanyi-Ochom et al., 2019). With the aid of activity, there would be improved health outcomes with enhanced nurses’ performance levels and improved focus on safeguards before treating any patient, reducing the death risk due to reduced technical, diagnosis, and medication errors. The training would also improve nurses’ technical and intellectual knowledge of using new and existing technologies to augment and reduce workloads, hence enhancing the time of response to patients (Ratwani et al., 2018). 

Targeted training outcomes entail a better transition and flexibility of service delivery with the best possible treatment for various patients and treatment options. Amir et al. (2018) state that vast possibilities exist in training and learning new treatments. As such, this training would incorporate collaborative and communication resources for an improved learning experience.

Knowledge about Medication Error

Slide 5: There has been a growth over the years of errors in drug administration, with about 530,000 incidents and 100,000 reports of medication errors annually, which have led to about 9000 deaths and a 10% rate of an event in every United States Hospital (Zauderer, 2022). As a result of medical errors, severe circumstances can be faced by both nurses and healthcare institutions, especially if negligence is noticed while considering factors such as dosage, timing, medication quantity, and even the route of medication administration (Kim & De Jesus, 2022).

NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 3 Improvement Plan In-Service Presentation

With reference to the last assessment, this improvement plan is structured to acquaint nurses with the proper medications, medication route of entry, dosage timings, and quantity. Channels of administration for medication are classified mainly by the location of drug application, which could be oral or intravenous. Selection of the path for applying medication is strictly dependent on ease of application and the drugs constituents and pharmacokinetics (Kim & De Jesus 2022). Hence adequate training of nurses and health care workers would entail a better understanding of the route of administration of drugs.

This type of setting entails that patients and caregivers take personal commitment for their own medication administration, creating a multi-dimensional error hazard that is tough to measure. Hence, this in-service improvement plan is structured to teach nurses accurate and proper medication administration processes to avoid problematic and extreme situations. 

Safe Medication Administration 

Slide 6: Secure and precise medication administration is a vital yet formidable obligation for nurses. It requires exceptional decision-making skills and judgment while understanding the responsibility and its implications for patient safety (Doyle & McCutcheon, 2017). Hence the need for continuous training of healthcare workers, especially nurses.

Components of Good Quality Care 

For any plan to be good and care exceptional, certain parts of it must make up for its effectiveness. Hence this in-service improvement plan is also constituted of strategies from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to reduce mortality risks and increase care quality (AHRQ, 2017). 

Safety Improvement Plan

Slide 7: The need for improved safety outcomes regarding medication safety cannot be over-emphasized. According to Chui et al. (2019), it is a unique and separate element of patient safety, but there needs to be lagging with regard to outpatient settings. Ismail (2020) also stated a continuous need to upgrade health and safety improvement plans. Effective work performance requires adequate planning, discipline, and a supervised approach, which can only be obtained from a proper safety improvement plan. The plan educates nurses on safety precautions to prevent patient mortality.

The Plan Goals 

As emphasized at every point of this plan, medication training, both in prescription and administration, is paramount. The plan aims at three key aspects that have the potential to improve care quality while reducing errors. 

Goal 1: To educate healthcare workers on primary points for handling patients. This training session would entail that nurses better comprehend their part regarding patients’ health outcomes while boosting willingness to treat patients. Hence educating nurses on medication safety would increase their knowledge of critical care with regard to errors (Abukhader & Abukhader, 2020). 

Goal 2: To expose possible errors as a result of wrong medication. This can be done through teamwork, communication, and knowledge transfer mechanisms that enable problems to be outlined, solutions preferred to patients with recommendations of substitute medications, order-to-order changes, and documentation of patient decisions (Mohammed et al., 2022). As team members suggest, this also entails using tools for quality care provision. 

Goal 3: To enhance care through technology. Since technology has come to stay, incorporating its features into healthcare is bound to yield benefits. The use of health information technology (HIT) to lesson prescription errors (Devin et al., 2020), scan and provide medication detail like the barcode medication administration system (BMAS) (Mulac et al., 2021) and provide consultation services through various eHealth platforms all aid to provide good patient care.

Audience Role, Importance, and Benefits to the Improvement Plan

Slide 8: With the joint commission aiming to normalize various measurements to review the quality of care within hospitals, nurses are paramount and key to the survival of the hospitals as well as the lives of patients (Barredo, 2017). Nurses primarily require attentiveness when administering medication to prevent errors and escalation of patients’ health conditions via the “five right” system that entails the right patient, drug, dose, route, and time (Hanson & Haddad, 2021).

Also, because of the dynamic nature of the human system, medications effectiveness might vary in individuals as some may respond faster while others might be allergic to medication; hence nurses have to understand drug constituents that could be allergic as well as adverse drug reaction documentation processes (Kiechle et al., 2018)

Benefits

With nurses remaining adequately trained and educated, there is a higher degree of guarantee for patient safety. As such, the improvement plans would aid in adopting practical communication transmission skills to achieve the goal. Whereas feedback mechanisms from nurses to the planning team would help in a better, more effective plan development and, as such, improved health outcomes (Mohammed et al., 2022; Bull et al., 2017)

Importance

Feedback plays an important role, and as such, information from participating nurses would reveal the rates of success, failure, scalability, and durability of this plan while revealing specific hindrances to the attainment of this plan by nurses. 

Activities for Skill Development

Slide 9: An opportunity for something new entails limitless possibilities of success for our plan, enabling nurses to provide safer treatment in a more patient-friendly and convenient way. Hence, nurses must follow specific guides and approaches to prevent medication errors. 

One significant new skill to be practiced is the patient-nurse collaboration method. This would ensure outpatient synergy in drug administration (Chui et al., 2019), where patients could actively know and understand the reasons for their prescriptions, opening them up to revealing personal histories and concerns. Also, the physician-nurse collaboration mechanism enables nurses to further learn on the job by gaining insight into key occurrences that could influence medication errors while exposing them to the use of new technologies for medical detailing as a means of pharmacist-nurse coordination (Mulac et al., 2021) hence avoiding severe issues in the process.

Practice Activity for Staff

Slide 10: Activities and simulations were created as role-play to enhance nurses’ knowledge of these new skills regarding patient care (Khari & Pazokian, 2022). Also, using the board and live games improve nurses’ knowledge and skills, especially in preventing medical errors (Chang et al., 2022). These would also open up new and hidden barriers to patient treatment.

Expected Outcomes 

Slide 11: On the conclusion of this training, it is expected that positive feedback is received as nurses should and would be able to effectively treat a patient with close to zero risks of medication errors, collaborate with other healthcare professionals as well as patients while adhering to requires standards for patient care even in times of complications.

Soliciting Feedback 

Slide 12: In conclusion, a digital survey form would be shared for ease of retrieval of audience feedback and a tool for future training. The survey would be a closed-ended questionnaire with specific indicators for the plan’s success, failures, and areas of improvement. 

Conclusion

Slide 13: Creating an implementation program to tackle errors in medication administration is paramount, and its success is a determinant of the ability of nurses to implement and put to good use the plans learned from training in the best possible way for improved quality of care.

References

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https://doi.org/10.4236/jbm.2020.86013 

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2017). Safe Medication Administration: Facilitator Guide. Ahrq.gov.

https://www.ahrq.gov/hai/tools/perinatal-care/modules/strategies/medication/safe-medication-fac-guide.html 

Barredo, E. (2017). The Role of Nurses in Hospital Quality Improvement – Tine Health.

https://tinehealth.com/2017/06/05/the-role-of-nurses-in-hospital-quality-improvement/ 

Bull, E. R., Mason, C., Junior, F. D., Santos, L. V., Scott, A., Ademokun, D., Simião, Z., Oliver, W. M., Joaquim, F. F., & Cavanagh, S. M. (2017). Developing nurse medication safety training in a health partnership in Mozambique using behavioural science. Globalization and Health, 13(1).

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-017-0265-1 

Chang, Y.-S., Hu, S. H., Kuo, S.-W., Chang, K.-M., Kuo, C.-L., Nguyen, T. V., & Chuang, Y.-H. (2022). Effects of board game play on nursing students’ medication knowledge: A randomized controlled trial. Nurse Education in Practice, 63, 103412.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2022.103412 

Chui, M. A., Pohjanoksa-Mäntylä, M., & Snyder, M. E. (2019). Improving medication safety in varied health systems. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy, 15(7), 811–812.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sapharm.2019.04.012 

Devin, J., Cleary, B. J., & Cullinan, S. (2020). The impact of health information technology on prescribing errors in hospitals: a systematic review and behaviour change technique analysis. Systematic Reviews, 9(1).

https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-020-01510-7 

Doyle, G. R., & McCutcheon, J. A. (2017, November 23). 6.2 safe medication administration – clinical procedures for safer patient care. Opentextbc.ca.

https://opentextbc.ca/clinicalskills/chapter/6-1-safe-medication-adminstration/ 

Hanson, A., & Haddad, L. M. (2021). Nursing rights of medication administration. PubMed; StatPearls Publishing.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK560654/ 

Ismail, K. (2020, August 21). Health Safety at Work Improvement Action Plan. HSSE WORLD.

https://hsseworld.com/health-safety-at-work-improvement-action-plan/ 

Khari, S., & Pazokian, M. (2022). Simulation of training solution for the prevention of medication errors in the emergency ward. Pharmacy Education, 22(1), 492–497.

https://doi.org/10.46542/pe.2022.221.492497 

Kiechle, E. S., McKenna, C. M., Carter, H., Zeymo, A., Gelfand, B. W., DeGeorge, L. M., Sauter, D. A., & Mazer-Amirshahi, M. (2018). Medication allergy and adverse drug reaction documentation discrepancies in an urban, academic emergency department. Journal of Medical Toxicology, 14(4), 272–277.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13181-018-0671-7 

Mohammed, E., McDonald, W. G., & Ezike, A. C. (2022). Teamwork in health care services delivery in Nigeria: a mixed methods assessment of perceptions and lived experiences of pharmacists in a tertiary hospital. Integrated Pharmacy Research and Practice, Volume 11, 33–45.

https://doi.org/10.2147/iprp.s331041 

Mulac, A., Mathiesen, L., Taxis, K., & Gerd Granås, A. (2021). Barcode medication administration technology use in hospital practice: a mixed-methods observational study of policy deviations. BMJ Quality & Safety, 30(12), 1021–1030.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2021-013223 

Ratwani, R. M., Savage, E., Will, A., Fong, A., Karavite, D., Muthu, N., Rivera, A. J., Gibson, C., Asmonga, D., Moscovitch, B., Grundmeier, R., & Rising, J. (2018). Identifying electronic health record usability and safety challenges in pediatric settings. Health Affairs, 37(11), 1752–1759.

https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.0699 

Tariq, R. A., & Scherbak, Y. (2022, July 3). Medication dispensing errors and prevention. National Library of Medicine; StatPearls Publishing.

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