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Essay Available:
Pages:
2 pages/≈550 words
Sources:
5 Sources
Style:
APA
Subject:
Health, Medicine, Nursing
Type:
Essay
Language:
English (U.S.)
Document:
MS Word
Date:
Total cost:
$ 8.64
Topic:

Promoting Hand Hygiene Practices Among Health Care Workers

Essay Instructions:

Improving Quality of Health Care Services
Select one initiative used to improve quality and/or safety of health care. Summarize the initiative and provide your views on the effectiveness of this initiative and how it can be improved.
Write a 2- to 3-page paper using the following guidelines and evaluation criteria. Use a minimum of five references from the professional nursing literature in the assigned course readings and other references in the Walden Library. If they are relevant, you may use one or two professional web sites in addition to the literature references.
Begin the paper with a brief paragraph that provides an overview of the assignment and its purpose. There is no separate heading for this paragraph; the heading is the same as the title of the paper. This will be about 2-3 sentences. The last sentence in this paragraph is a sentence that begins "The purpose of this paper is to ¨.
Use the following headings for the rest of the paper.
A quality and/or safety initiative
Describe a quality and/or safety initiative currently being used in any health care setting. This will be a one-paragraph overview of the main points of the initiative.
Reasons for the initiative
Discuss at least two reasons supporting why this initiative was developed. This will be one paragraph discussing each of the two reasons.
Strengths and limitations of the initiative
Discuss one strength and one limitation of the initiative in having an impact on the quality or safety of health care. This will be one paragraph for the strength identified and one paragraph for the limitation.
Role of nursing
Discuss a contribution that nursing could make to improving the effectiveness of this initiative. This will be one paragraph.
Summary
Provide a one-paragraph summary of the main points in the paper.
Please see references list below:
Articles
Select and read two of the following articles:
-Adler-Milstein, J. Kvedar, J., and Bates D. W. (2014). Telehealth among US hospitals: Several factors, including state reimbursement and licensure policies, influence adoption. Health Affairs, 33(2), 2207-215.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
-Auerbach, D., Staiger, D. O., Muench, U., and Buerhaus, P. I. (2013). The nursing workforce in an era of health care reform. The New England Journal of Medicine, 368(16), 1470-1472.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
-Cosgrove, D. M., Fisher, M., Gabow, P., Gottlieb, G., Halvorson, G. C., James, B., C., Kaplan, G. S., Perlin, J. B., Petzel, R., Steele, G. D., and Toussaint, J. S. (2013). Ten strategies to lower costs, improve quality, and engage patients: The view from leading health system CEOs. Health Affairs, 32(2), 321-7.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
-Grob, R., Schlesinger, M., Davis, S., Cohen, D., and Lapps, J. (2013). The affordable care act's plan for consumer assistance with insurance moves states forward but remains a work in progress, Health Affairs 32(2), 347-356.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
Web Sites
AHRQ (n.d.). Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Retrieved November 20, 2014 from http://www(dot)ahrq(dot)gov
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Web site provides many resources for health care workers. It has up-to-date clinical information, funding opportunities, research findings, and quality and patient safety information.
-AQA (2014). AQA Alliance. Retrieved November 20, 2014 from http://www(dot)aqaalliance(dot)org/default.htm
The AQA Alliance, originally known as the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance, is a collaborative organization that focuses on improving patient safety and care. The key areas of focus are to identify quality gaps, control exponentially increasing costs, decrease redundancy, and reduce administrative burdens.
-Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (2009). Crossing the Quality Chasm: The IOM Health Care Quality Initiative. Retrieved January 16, 2009 from http://www(dot)iom(dot)edu/?id=19174
This article describes the efforts from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to improve the quality care in the United States.
-IHI (n.d.). Protecting 5 Million Lives from Harm. Retrieved January 16, 2009 from http://www(dot)ihi(dot)org/offerings/Initiatives/PastStrategicInitiatives/5MillionLivesCampaign/Pages/default.aspx
This Web site provides information on the 5 Million Lives Campaign. It has information on general materials, current progress, participants, and more.
-The Joint Commission (2011). National Patient Safety Goals. Retrieved February 9, 2011 from http://www(dot)jointcommission(dot)org/standards_information/npsgs.aspx
This Web site provides access to the Joint Commission's national patient safety goals for 2009 through 2003. It distinguishes between the following programs: ambulatory, behavioral, critical access, disease-specific, home, hospital, laboratory, long term, Medicare, and office-based surgery.
-NCQA (2008). The State of Health Care Quality. Retrieved January 16, 2009 from http://www(dot)ncqa(dot)org/Portals/0/Newsroom/SOHC/SOHC_08.pdf
This document by the National Committee for Quality Assurance provides industry trends and analysis on the state of health care quality.
-NQF (2008). National Quality Forum. Retrieved March 10, 2009 from http://www(dot)qualityforum(dot)org/Home.aspx
The National Quality Forum is a membership organization focused on the creation of a national strategy for health care quality measurement and reporting. Their Web site provides current resources on health care news, projects, national priorities, and publications.
Optional Resources
Reading
-Course Text: Policy and Politics in Nursing and Health Care
◦Chapter 48, "Quality and Safety in Health Care: Policy Issues"
Web Sites
-CDC (2014). National Healthcare Safety Network. Retrieved November 17, 2014 from http://www(dot)cdc(dot)gov/nhsn/
-IHI (n.d.). Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Retrieved January 17, 2009 from http://www(dot)ihi(dot)org/
-NCQA (2009). National Committee for Quality Assurance. Retrieved January 17, 2009 from http://www(dot)ncqa(dot)org
-NQF (2008). National Quality Forum. Retrieved January 16, 2009 from http://www(dot)qualityforum(dot)org/Home.aspx
-Commonwealth Fund (2014). The Commonwealth Fund. Retrieved November 18, 2014 from http://www(dot)commonwealthfund(dot)org/
-The LeapFrog Group (2014). The Leapfrog Group. Retrieved Nomvember 20, 2014 from http://leapfroggroup(dot)org

Essay Sample Content Preview:
Hand hygiene initiative to prevent nosocomial/hospital-acquired infections (HAI) and improve patient safety
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Hand hygiene initiative to prevent nosocomial/hospital-acquired infections (HAI) and improve patient safety
Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) have an extensive impact on health care in America accounting for over 100,000 deaths annually and costing the healthcare system more than $7 billion to the health care system annually (Kowitt, Jefferson & Mermel, 2013). Proper hand hygiene practice is seen as an essential measure in the prevention of such infections. Nonetheless, adherence of some nurses and physicians has been poor. The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary of a hand hygiene initiative used in improving safety of health care in a health care setting.
A safety initiative: Hand hygiene (HH) initiative
Several healthcare facilities have carried out hospital-wide hand hygiene (HH) initiatives aimed at minimizing nosocomial infections and improving safety of patients. These initiatives consist of (i) education modules to provide awareness to the healthcare workers informing them that they could transmit micro-organisms from patient to patient when doing various tasks (). (ii) Videos, posters and pictures illustrating how to wash hands properly; (iii) adding more sinks and ensuring that sinks are easily accessible; (iv) hand-drying equipment such as paper towel as well as (v) adding more automated alcohol-based HH product dispensers and hand sanitizer dispensers and placing them at sites where they are actually needed (Kampf, Loffler & Gastmeier, 2009).
Reasons for the initiative
Poor HH brings about millions of infections annually, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Infections acquired in the healthcare setting can cause patients to remain in the healthcare facility for an extended timeframe than is anticipated because of management and treatment of the HAI (Potts, 2010). In situations that are severe, an infection can result in patient’s death. The improvement of HH at health care settings is intended to eradicate hospital-acquired infections and in so doing improve the safety of patients. Training of the healthcare workers and improving hand-hygiene equipment are of major importance in facilitating HH practices amongst healthcare providers (Kampf, Loffler & Gastmeier, 2009).
Strengths and limitations of the initiative
Strength: the initia...
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