Capella University Quality and Safety Gap Analysis Discussion
Capella University Quality and Safety Gap Analysis Discussion
Question Description
Write an analysis, 4–5 pages in length, of the gap between current and desired performance, with respect to the provision of safe, high-quality patient care.Note: Each assessment in this course builds on the work you completed in the previous assessment. Therefore, you must complete the assessments in this course in the order in which they are presented.SHOW LESSAs a nurse leader, you must be able to assess your organization’s ability to deliver safe, high-quality patient care. In so doing, you may be required to perform a gap analysis of a quality or safety issue as the first step in improving outcomes. Failure to meet benchmarks for safe and effective patient care can have reimbursement, regulatory, and legal consequences.This assessment provides an opportunity to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to successfully implement changes that improve patient outcomes by:
Evaluating the current culture of an organization.
Performing an outcomes gap analysis.
Determining what changes are needed to bridge the gap.
Examining current thinking on this topic contained in the literature.
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:
Competency 1: Analyze quality and safety outcomes from an administrative and systems perspective.
Identify a systemic problem in an organization related to adverse quality and safety outcomes.
Propose specific practice changes within an organization that will improve quality and safety outcomes and bridge the gap between current and desired performance.
Prioritize proposed practice changes.
Competency 2: Determine how outcome measures promote quality and safety processes within an organization
Determine how proposed practice changes will foster a culture of quality and safety.
Competency 3: Determine how specific organizational functions, policies, processes, procedures, norms, and behaviors can be used to build reliable and high-performing organizations.
Determine how a particular organizational culture or hierarchy might affect or contribute to adverse quality and safety outcomes.
Justify necessary changes to particular organizational functions, processes, and behaviors that correct or mitigate adverse quality and safety outcomes.
Competency 5: Communicate effectively with diverse audiences, in an appropriate form and style, consistent with applicable organizational, professional, and scholarly standards.
Communicate analysis data and information clearly and accurately, using correct grammar and mechanics.
Integrate relevant and credible sources of evidence to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style.
Competency Map
CHECK YOUR PROGRESSUse this online tool to track your performance and progress through your course.
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Context
Quality and safety are everyone’s responsibility as a team of interprofessional care delivery partners. Together we develop policies that support quality and safe care delivery. As part of the interprofessional team, nurses are leaders in care and thus are responsible and accountable for leading and providing safe quality care.Health care delivery is structured around evidenced-based information. Quality is defined by exploring proven, evidenced-based information. After reviewing and defining evidenced-based information, the interprofessional team applies this knowledge to assess the organization’s or the practice setting’s ability to provide evidenced-based care delivery. When a gap in care is identified, it is important to propose an evidenced-based change and to execute a plan for improved care.
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Questions to Consider
As you prepare to complete this assessment, you may want to think about other related issues to deepen your understanding or broaden your viewpoint. You are encouraged to consider the questions below and discuss them with a fellow learner, a work associate, an interested friend, or a member of your professional community. Note that these questions are for your own development and exploration and do not need to be completed or submitted as part of your assessment.SHOW LESSCulture and process contribute to our ability to develop and sustain quality and safety in a health care organization. By exploring these topics, you can analyze where you may have gaps in practice that affect outcomes. In addition, organizations must create benchmarks for outcomes to determine whether they are meeting quality and safety goals.
What does your organization measure, related to quality and safety, and why?
Are there certain aspects of your organization’s culture and processes that support or hinder quality and safety?
Is the organization meeting outcome measurement benchmarks?
If not, how might you address those gaps in performance? What system could be developed to support a change to close a particular gap?
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Resources
MSN PROGRAM JOURNEY
The following is a useful map that will guide you as you continue your MSN program. This map gives you an overview of all the steps required to prepare for your practicum and to complete your degree. It also outlines the support that will be available to you along the way.
MSN Program Journey | Transcript.
REQUIRED RESOURCES
The following resources are required to complete the assessment.
APA Style Paper Template [DOCX]. Use this template for your gap analysis.
SHOW LESS
SUGGESTED RESOURCES
The resources provided here are optional. You may use other resources of your choice to prepare for this assessment; however, you will need to ensure that they are appropriate, credible, and valid. The MSN-FP6212 Health Care Quality and Safety Management Library Guide can help direct your research, and the Supplemental Resources and Research Resources, both linked from the left navigation menu in your courseroom, provide additional resources to help support you.
Safety and Quality
These resources address various aspects of safety and quality that will help you with your assessment.
Arries, E. J. (2014). Patient safety and quality in healthcare: Nursing ethics for ethics quality. Nursing Ethics, 21(1), 3–5. doi:http://dx.doi.org.library.capella.edu/10.1177/0969733013509042.
Marvin, V., Kuo, S., Poots, A. J., Woodcock, T., Vaughan, L., & Bell, D. (2016). Applying quality improvement methods to address gaps in medicines reconciliation at transfers of care from an acute UK hospital. BMJ Open, 6(6), 1–11. doi:http://dx.doi.org.library.capella.edu/10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010230.
Prakash, G. (2015). Steering healthcare service delivery: A regulatory perspective. International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, 28(2), 173–192.
Unruh, L., & Hofler, R. (2016). Predictors of gaps in patient safety and quality in U.S. hospitals. Health Services Research, 51(6), 2258–2281. doi:10.1111/1475-6773.12468.
Integrated Ethics: Improving Ethics Quality in Health Care | Transcript.
Vila Health: Quality and Safety Gap Analysis | Transcript.
This interactive exercise introduces the concept of gap analysis, which may help you with the assessment.
Suggested Writing Resources
You can use the following additional resources to improve your writing skills and as source materials for seeking answers to specific questions.
APA Module.
Academic Honesty & APA Style and Formatting.
APA Style Paper Tutorial [DOCX].
Capella Resources
Guiding Questions: Quality and Safety Gap Analysis.
This document includes questions to consider and additional guidance on how to successfully complete the assessment.
ePortfolio.
This resource provides information about ePortfolio, including how to use the product’s different features.
Assessment Instructions
Your quality and safety gap analysis will provide the basis for the remaining assessments in this course.
PREPARATION
As a nurse leader, you are fully aware of the hazardous nature of health care and that organizations must continually seek to improve the quality and safety of the care they provide to patients. For this assessment, you will identify a systemic problem in your organization, practice setting, or area of interest associated with adverse quality and safety outcomes (for example, an increase in the incidence of falls or medical errors) and analyze the gap between current and desired performance.Note: Remember that you can submit all or a portion of your draft analysis to Smarthinking for feedback before you submit the final version for this assessment. However, be mindful of the turnaround time of 24–48 hours for receiving feedback, if you plan on using this free service.
REQUIREMENTS
Note: The requirements outlined below correspond to the grading criteria in the Quality and Safety Gap Analysis Scoring Guide. Be sure that your written analysis addresses each point, at a minimum. You may also want to read the Quality and Safety Gap Analysis Scoring Guide and Guiding Questions: Quality and Safety Gap Analysis (linked in the Resources) to better understand how each criterion will be assessed.
Conducting the Analysis
Identify a systemic problem in your organization, practice setting, or area of interest that contributes to adverse quality and safety outcomes.
Propose specific practice changes that will improve quality and safety outcomes and bridge the gap between current and desired performance.
Prioritize proposed practice changes.
Determine how proposed practice changes will foster a culture of quality and safety.
Determine how a particular organizational culture or hierarchy might affect quality and safety outcomes.
Justify necessary changes with respect to functions, processes, or behaviors, specific to your organization.
Writing and Supporting Evidence
Communicate analysis data and information clearly and accurately, using correct grammar and mechanics.
Integrate relevant and credible sources of evidence to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style.
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS
Format your document using APA style.
Use the APA Paper Template linked in the resources. Be sure to include:
A title page and reference page. An abstract is not required.
A running head on all pages.
Appropriate section headings.
Properly-formatted citations and references.
Your analysis should be 4–5 pages in length, not including the title page and reference page.
Portfolio Prompt: You may choose to save your gap analysis to your ePortfolio.
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You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS
Discussion Questions (DQ)
Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation
Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality
Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes
I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy
For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy
The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication
Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.