09 Nov Root-Cause Analysis and Safety Improvement Plan
For this assessment, you can use a supplied template (See Attachment) to conduct a root-cause analysis. The completed assessment will be a scholarly paper focusing on a quality or safety issue pertaining to medication administration in a health care setting of your choice as well as a safety improvement plan.
You will create a plan to improve the safety of patients related to the concern of medication administration safety based on the results of your analysis, using the literature and professional best practices as well as the existing resources at your chosen health care setting to provide a rationale for your plan. References need to be within 5 years.
Be sure that your plan addresses the following:
- Analyze the root cause of a patient safety issue or a specific sentinel event pertaining to medication administration in an organization.
- Apply evidence-based and best-practice strategies to address the safety issue or sentinel event pertaining to medication administration.
- Create a feasible, evidence-based safety improvement plan for safe medication administration.
- Identify organizational resources that could be leveraged to improve your plan for safe medication administration.
For this assessment, you may choose from the following options as the subject of a root-cause analysis and safety improvement plan:
- The specific safety concern identified in your previous assessment pertaining to medication administration safety concerns.
- The readings, case studies, or a personal experience in which a sentinel event occurred surrounding an issue or concern with medication administration.
As patient safety concerns continue to be addressed in the health care settings, nurses can play an active role in implementing safety improvement measures and plans. Often root-cause analyses are conducted, and safety improvement plans are created to address sentinel or adverse events such as medication errors, patient falls, wrong-site surgery events, and hospital-acquired infections. Performing a root-cause analysis offers a systematic approach for identifying causes of problems, including process and system-check failures. Once the causes of failures have been determined, a safety improvement plan can be developed to prevent recurrences. The baccalaureate nurse’s role as a leader is to create safety improvement plans as well as disseminate vital information to staff nurses and other health care professionals to protect patients and improve outcomes.
Nursing practice is governed by health care policies and procedures as well as state and national regulations developed to prevent problems. It is critical for nurses to participate in gathering and analyzing data to determine causes of patient safety issues, in solving problems, and in implementing quality improvements.
