The Perceived Effectiveness of Total Quality Management as a Tool for Quality Improvement in Emergency Medicine

OBJECTIVES: To describe the perceived effectiveness of using the Total Quality Management (TQM) approach to quality improvement in both academic and nonacademic EDs, and to discuss some important barriers to effectiveness of TQM programs. METHOD: A mail survey of 100 EDs was conducted with telephone follow-up. Hospitals were randomly selected from three subgroups: university teaching hospitals, nonuniversity teaching hospitals, and private nonteaching hospitals. ED physician directors or nonphysician administrators with knowledge of departmental quality improvement initiatives were surveyed. RESULTS: The overall response rate was 60%. Of the respondents, 54 (90.0%) used TQM techniques as part of their quality improvement initiatives. TQM techniques were used more frequently and for a longer duration in academic programs. ED staff participation in TQM projects was relatively low; less than 25% in the majority (79.6%) of all EDs. TQM initiatives were ranked least effective in university settings, of which 11 of 13 (84.6%) rated their TQM programs as ineffective or having no effect. More mature programs (>5 years old) had a significantly higher ranking for effectiveness than those programs less than 2 years old. CONCLUSIONS: Total Quality Management is being utilized in a large number of EDs. TQM initiative is perceived as having little or no positive effect. This is particularly the case in academic EDs.     

Total quality management. Applications to nursing service

Total quality management (TQM) can offer nursing practical solutions to the "best for less" dilemma when specifically adapted to the needs of the nursing profession and individual nursing service departments. The author explains the TQM philosophy and its principles, presents strategies that may be used by nurse executives interested in integrating TQM into their nursing management systems, and discusses specific guidelines for successful implementation of TQM within any nursing department.     

International field test results of the Observable Indicators of Nursing Home Care Quality instrument

Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia developed the Observable Indicators of Nursing Home Care Quality instrument to measure the dimensions of nursing home care quality during a brief on-site visit to a nursing home. The instrument has been translated for use in Iceland and used in Canada. Results of the validity and reliability studies using the instrument in 12 nursing homes in Reykjavik, in a large Veterans Home in Ontario with 14 units tested separately, and in 20 nursing homes in Missouri, are promising. High-content validity was observed in all countries, together with excellent inter-rater reliability and coefficient alpha. Test-retest reliabilities in Iceland and Missouri were good. Results of the international field test of the Observable Indicators of Nursing Home Care Quality instrument points to the usefulness of such an instrument in measuring nursing home care quality following a quick on-site observation in a nursing facility. The instrument should be used as a facility-wide assessment of quality, rather than for individual units within a facility. We strongly recommend its use by practising nurses in nursing homes to assess quality of care and guide efforts to improve care. We recommend its use by researchers and consumers and further testing of the use of the instrument with regulators.     

The key elements in the development of a quality management environment for pathology services

There is increasing recognition that many quality management initiatives in health care are undertaken without the appropriate development of a responsive and supportive organizational environment. In the present study, a multidisciplinary team was empowered to make appropriate changes in order to improve a variety of problem areas that affected the total pathology service of the hospital. Major changes were initially undertaken to develop a quality management environment. The four elements found to be important to the creation of the Total Quality Management (TQM) environment were change in management culture, development of teamwork, focus on customers, and continuous feedback to staff. The accomplishment of the TQM was assessed and confirmed using criteria developed by the Pathology Project TQM Team. As the TQM approach is process driven, it should be adaptable to other clinical situations and not just to pathology services. Potential barriers to achieving the required organizational environment are also explored.     

The orthopaedic critical path.

Health care providers, purchasers, and insurers are struggling to manage the cost of health care while maintaining the quality of care. Alliant Health System has incorporated Total Quality Management (TQM) and the Critical Path Process throughout the corporation as a managed care strategy to deliver cost-effective quality care. Using the Critical Path Process has demonstrated a reduction in Length of Stay (LOS) and cost while maintaining quality. The success of this process depends upon an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach among health care providers in identifying practice patterns to assure appropriate and timely delivery of patient care.     

Using improvement science to promote evidence-based practice in a childhood cancer and hematology center

A major children's cancer and hematology center established a Quality Transformation (QT) Core to develop and monitor empirical outcomes that demonstrate excellence in clinical care. The QT Core, based on the Institute of Medicine's domains of quality health care, aims to ensure that care is safe, effective, patient centered, timely, efficient, and equitable. Specific goals for the first year of the QT Core were to develop a team of improvement science experts, engage faculty and staff in QT initiatives, promote accountability for excellence in clinical care, and establish specific metrics to evaluate process, structure, and outcomes for QT Core projects. The purpose of this article is to discuss the successful development of a quality transformation core within a pediatric subspecialty and demonstrate the principles of improvement science through an actual quality transformation project designed to implement an evidence-based guideline for procedural sedation for children with cancer. The QT Core within this subspecialty was founded on principles of successful transformation of patient care that includes motivation to change, leaders committed to quality, active engagement of staff in meaningful problem-solving initiatives, alignment with organization goals with resource allocation, and integration to bridge boundaries throughout an organization. These key principles are demonstrated through the discussion of the development of the QT Core and implementation of an evidence-based procedure sedation guideline. Pediatric and pediatric subspecialty groups can be on the forefront of national initiatives that promote quality health care, exemplified by the QT Core developed within the cancer and hematology center.     

Quality assurancesystems for nurse educators

This paper seeks to examine two systems designed for thinking about and improving the understanding of quality assurance in nurse educator functions, using Total Quality Management (TQM) principles.The first system is concerned with what needs to be done to realise major goals and objectives. The design parameters, adapted from established quality concepts, are those quality characteristics specifically associated with nurse educator functions — perceived as a set of services. The second system considers how things should be done. How policy statements can be translated into specific educator behaviours and practices that publicly assert institutional values to student customers within a process of continuous quality improvement.Further sections look at the integratedworking of the systems and discuss system implications. A final summary exhorts nurse educators to forge closer working relationships with their student customers to fashion a quality service.     

Total Quality Management (TQM) in the Non-Profit Setting

Unforeseen issues during the 1980s slowly eroded the infrastructure of the Woodbourne Center, a residential treatment center in Baltimore, Maryland. A search for alternative organizational and management styles was initiated to minimize a sense of mistrust in management, inconsistency in accountability, and ineffective flow of communication. Total Quality Management, TQM, was selected as a possible solution. This paper presents the Woodbourne experience in implementing TQM in a residential treatment center. Discussed are: (I) components of TQM selected for adoption; (2) techniques for identifying issues and problem areas; and (3) assessment. Resented are twelve month data indicating personal and professional growth and sustained attitudiial changes in locus of control and self-efficacy. A discussion of the role of TQM within the auspices of the residential treatment center is presented.     

Assessing the impact of total quality management and organizational culture on multiple outcomes of care for coronary artery bypass graft surgery patients

OBJECTIVES: To assess the impact of total quality management (TQM) and organizational culture on a comprehensive set of endpoints of care for coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) patients, including risk-adjusted adverse outcomes, clinical efficiency, patient satisfaction, functional health status, and cost of care. METHODS: Prospective cohort study of 3,045 eligible CABG patients from 16 hospitals using risk-adjusted clinical outcomes, functional health status, patient satisfaction, and cost measures. Implementation of TQM was measured by a previously validated instrument based on the Baldridge national quality award criteria. Organizational culture was measured by a previously validated 20-item instrument. Generalized estimating equations were used to control for potential selection bias, repeated measures, and intraclass correlation. RESULTS: A 2- to 4-fold difference in all major clinical CABG care endpoints was observed among the 16 hospitals, but little of this variation was associated with TQM or organizational culture. Patients receiving CABG from hospitals with high TQM scores were more satisfied with their nursing care (P = 0.005) but were more likely to have lengths of stay >10 days (P = 0.0003). A supportive group culture was associated with shorter postoperative intubation times (P = 0.01) but longer operating room times (P = 0.004). A supportive group culture was also associated with higher patient physical (P = 0.005) and mental (P = 0.01) functional health status scores 6 months after CABG. CONCLUSIONS: There was little effect of TQM and organizational culture on multiple endpoints of care for CABG patients. There is a need to examine further the relationships among individual professional skills and motivations, group and microsystem team processes, specifically tailored interventions, and organization-wide culture, decision support processes, and incentives. Assessing the impact of such multifaceted approaches is an important area for further research.     

健康教育对糖尿病患者心理状况和生活质量的影响

目的:探讨健康教育对糖尿病患者心理健康状况及生活质量的影响,为健康教育和临床护理提供相应的依据.方法:选择2008年1月-2010年12月入住我院治疗的268例符合纳入条件的患者为研究对象,健康教育干预前后分别用一般调查问卷、症状自评量表和生活质量测定量表简表进行调查.结果:接受护理干预后的患者的生活质量和心理健康状况较接受干预前有所好转(P﹤0.05,P﹤0.01).结论:糖尿病患者经过护理干预后,生活质量状况整体水平有所提高,护理人员应在实施护理的过程中多应用这些方法提高护理服务质量.     

Transformational leadership: moving total quality management to world-class organizations

Transformational values and competencies will become critically important by the year 2001 if we are to achieve a health system that fosters community well-being and basic care for all, financed through a combined public-private partnership that is cost effective and uses treatments that unite body, mind and spirit. This article will focus on the use of transformational leadership as a strategy to move health-care organizations beyond traditional values and approaches by building upon the core values of total quality management (TQM). Learning organizations will emerge and finally world-class organizations will evolve, combining the characteristics of total quality and learning organizations, and more. A world-class organization can be described as being the best in its class or better than its competitors in the community, state, nation or world.     

Total quality management: rhetoric and reality

TQM in health care today is still more rhetoric than reality. Changing the typical health care organization's culture and installing the infrastructure needed to support TQM will be expensive and time consuming, and will require a new technology of health care quality control that is still developing. TQM will achieve its considerable potential only if management stays the course, invests the time and money--and reins in Ruby and her ilk.     

Developing and testing the health literacy universal precautions toolkit

The health literacy demands of the healthcare system often exceed the health literacy skills of Americans. This article reviews the development of the Health Literacy Universal Precautions (HLUP) Toolkit, commissioned by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and designed to help primary care practices structure the delivery of care as if every patient may have limited health literacy. The development of the toolkit spanned 2 years and consisted of 3 major tasks: (1) developing individual tools (modules explaining how to use or implement a strategy to minimize the effects of low health literacy), using existing health literacy resources when possible, (2) testing individual tools in clinical practice and assembling them into a prototype toolkit, and (3) testing the prototype toolkit in clinical practice. Testing revealed that practices will use tools that are concise and actionable and are not perceived as being resource intensive. Conducting practice self-assessments and generating enthusiasm among staff were key elements for successful implementation. Implementing practice changes required more time than anticipated and some knowledge of quality improvement techniques. In sum, the HLUP Toolkit holds promise as a means of improving primary care for people with limited health literacy, but further testing is needed.     

Business coalitions on health care. An evolution from cost containment to quality improvement.

Business coalitions on health were unable to achieve community wide savings in health care costs in the 1980s. Some coalitions are using TQM/CQI to achieve high quality health care at a reduced cost. Although too recent to determine its success, the use of TQM/CQI in employer-provider partnerships built on trust and good data systems may be the best hope for private sector health care system reform. Health professionals knowledgeable about TQM/CQI can play an important role in helping their employers make new relationships with health care providers work.     

Nursing interventions for adults following a mental health crisis: A systematic review guided by trauma‐informed principles

There exists a growing need for health and service providers to respond to persons in a manner that recognizes the prevalence and impact of trauma in individuals and prevent inadvertent re‐traumatization in the routine process of care. The experience of mental health crisis in of itself can have traumatic and impactful effects on individuals. Trauma‐informed approaches to care offer a framework to provide crisis intervention responses that are based on the acknowledgement of the prevalence and impact of trauma and define trauma not by the event per se, but by the impact of an experience of trauma. The integration of trauma‐informed principles in the context of crisis intervention is a current practice gap. In order to inform a portion of a best‐practice guideline for registered nurses and the interprofessional team, a systematic literature review was conducted to primarily identify nursing interventions within four weeks of a mental health crisis, with a secondary focus on identifying particular interventions that included trauma‐informed principles. The systematic review yielded 21 quantitative and qualitative studies related to nursing interventions for mental health crisis, 10 of which referred to one or more principles of trauma‐informed approaches. There was a lack of studies on nursing interventions explicitly linked to implementation of trauma‐informed principles, highlighting future research needs and focused efforts to integrate trauma‐informed principles into crisis intervention practices.     

TQM/CQI in business and health care. An overview.

TQM/CQI is increasingly being used by U.S. companies and the health care industry to improve their operations and profitability. TQM/CQI can be used by occupational health nurses to help focus efforts to improve their health services and demonstrate their value. TQM/CQI also is used by businesses to improve the quality and cost of external health services. Occupational health nurses who are knowledgeable in TQM/CQI can help assure the quality of external health services as businesses strive to reduce rising health care costs.     

Team and patient orientation in nursing as a part of quality management--status and needs for research

The paper introduces a holistic concept of quality management in hospitals--the approach of employee and patient orientation ("MPO-Mitarbeiter- und Patientenorientierung"). It is shown that quality in health care does not primarily depend on the regulation of quantitative input and output of the health care system but is largely determined by improvements of processes within the system. TQM models like the European Quality Award are showing the way towards improving processes by focusing on employee and client orientation and satisfaction. Patient satisfaction has become a more and more popular indicator for quality in health care. However, reviews of the vast amount of literature on patient satisfaction reveal that present research suffers from the same problems and shortcomings that have already been criticised about 20 years ago. Only few studies choose innovative approaches by integrating the perspectives of patients and employees and by refraining from the insufficient measurement of satisfaction. Three of these studies are presented and compared. Against this background the MPO-approach is described; the approach integrates results from work psychology as well as from nursing research within the concept of complete activity. In contrast to other models of quality management the MPO-approach provides suitable methods for analysis and assessment of employee and patient orientation. These methods are described and are finally discussed with respect to strategies of total quality management in hospitals.     

Family initiated escalation of care for the deteriorating patient in hospital: Family centred care or just “box ticking”

Family centred care is a shared belief that a child's emotional and developmental needs are best met when the health system involves the family in planning, delivery and evaluation of care. The important role that families contribute to health care outcomes is emphasised throughout the National Safety and Quality Healthcare Service (NSQHS) Standards. An emerging component is the family's contribution to Rapid Response Systems (RRS) through the early detection of patient clinical deterioration. This initiative has been driven, in part, by a number of high profile paediatric cases where it was identified that healthcare providers did not appropriately respond to families’ concerns, resulting in patient deaths. This paper draws together the synergies between family centred care concepts, the NSQHS Standards, and the progress made to date in developing a family initiated process for escalating care with specific reference to paediatric acute care.A number of programs have been developed to guide implementation of family escalation of care. Measures of effectiveness of implementation have mainly focused on policy and process without first understanding barriers or facilitators through engagement with stakeholders and environmental assessment. Two recent reviews have not identified any rigorous attempts to evaluate implementation and only 11 reports are cited across these reviews to date. Evaluation of effectiveness of this complex intervention should take into account process measures of fidelity, dose and reach. There is also a need to assess the impact on families, particularly within a diverse cultural mix. An agreed definition for a paediatric RRS patient outcome measure is essential in evaluating the impact on patient safety and quality. Without this systematic evidence informed knowledge translation approach, then it would appear that progress in implementing family initiated deterioration of condition processes is more about meeting the NSQHS Standards – ticking the box – than genuine engagement with families.     

Evaluating the implementation of confusion assessment method‐intensive care unit using a quality improvement approach

Quality improvement (QI) is a way through which health care delivery can be made safer and more effective. Various models of quality improvement methods exist in health care today. These models can help guide and manage the process of introducing changes into clinical practice. The aim of this project was to implement the use of a delirium assessment tool into three adult critical care units within the same hospital using a QI approach. The objective was to improve the identification and management of delirium. Using the Model for Improvement framework, a multidisciplinary working group was established. A delirium assessment tool was introduced via a series of educational initiatives. New local guidelines regarding the use of delirium assessment and management for the multidisciplinary team were also produced. Audit data were collected at 6 weeks and 5 months post‐implementation to evaluate compliance with the use of the tool across three critical care units within a single hospital in London. At 6 weeks, in 134 assessment points out of a possible 202, the tool was deemed to be used appropriately, meaning that 60% of patients received timely assessment; 18% of patients were identified as delirious in audit one. Five months later, only 95 assessment points out of a possible 199 were being appropriately assessed (47%); however, a greater number (32%) were identified as delirious. This project emphasizes the complexity of changing practice in a large busy critical care centre. Despite an initial increase in delirium assessment, this was not sustained over time. The use of a QI model highlights the continuous process of embedding changes into clinical practice and the need to use a QI method that can address the challenging nature of modern health care. QI models guide changes in practice. Consideration should be given to the type of QI model used.