While quality improvement is a necessary feature of the healthcare system, intervention results may be transient without appropriate institutional support systems. Lifewings, a company for patient safety products and solutions, offers four tips to improving the permanence of patient safety initiatives.
1. Conduct refresher training. Refresher training ensures the maintenance and improvement of vital skills. Data collection on critical intervention measures will provide some clue as to how often refresher training might be necessary.
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2. Share data. The data institutions collect is most useful when it is available to frontline staff. Sharing data allows everyone to whom the data is relevant to benchmark and to build unit, team and individual plans for improvement. Consider displaying data in common spaces, sharing it in meetings, emailing it or celebrating it through small events.
3. Conduct new hire training. Train new hires from the beginning of quality initiatives. New hires stepping into the middle of quality initiatives may not be able to sustain quality improvements, as they may lack vital information on processes or behaviors.
4. Perform leadership rounding. Leadership rounding will revitalize projects. Leaders doing rounds should meet to discuss what is going well and what needs to be addressed.
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