Quality improvement is essential in the healthcare sector, especially for healthcare facilities and nursing staff. That is because it helps ensure that the healthcare facilities provide the safest and quality healthcare services to the patients while ensuring that nursing staff balances their overall work for productivity and well-being (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2019.-c). Hence, my improvement project aims to improve how I handle and balance my work and home life. Currently, I am working over 40 hours, thus failing to meet my goal of spending quality time with my family. Hence, the table will incorporate my workdays but exclude the weekends. The main reason for prioritizing my work and home life balance is because I have identified that my mental health status has been deteriorating ever since I took over as a Nurse Manager. The situation is overwhelming me, and at some point, I feel regretting the role. Due to such concerns, I am starting to regret my decision to take over my new role as a Nurse Manager. However, I am hopeful I will become more productive in my work and improve my relationships with my husband and children through quality improvement. Therefore, I will incorporate some important components in my project, including process analysis, measurement, changes, and project reflection and application. Measurement of Patient Safety Essay Assignment
Part Two: Process Analysis
Quality improvement projects require engaging with effective models and procedures to identify the issues that may lead to an adverse effect. For instance, if I do not identify the main issue that influences my work-life balance, it may affect my well-being and relationship with my family. Hence, I will involve a root cause analysis method to identify all loopholes that may influence my quality improvement approach (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2019. -d). Hence, the process I plan to take is to start with an improvement in my daily working hours each week for four weeks. However, as Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (n.d) postulates, process mapping in a project is essential since it helps one identify the process and task owners and outline the expected timelines. As a result, I will build on each step by adding another tool to try and improve my hours. For example, in week one, I will not engage any tool to evaluate how many hours I will work to act as my improvement process control. In week 2, I will write down the estimated time and tasks needing to be covered within that week. For Week 3, I will incorporate an alarm as a prompt to control the hours I work, especially in marking the completion of my hours. Lastly, in week 4, I will add an alarm to help me complete all tasks without delay. That will involve a 15-minute alarm that will notify me 15 minutes before departure. Furthermore, I will ensure that these alarms are on repeat mode to prevent me from forgetting to set them. The process mapping was made possible by collaborating with my director.
Part 3: Measurement
In quality improvement, measurement results in various improvement activities. According to Johnson & Sollecito (2020), measurement helps evaluate current performance, set realistic goals, and monitor improvement interventions and efforts. In that case, I chose to do my data collection by tallying every day’s work for the four weeks (Appendix A). As a result, I connected with my director to develop different tools to use each week but added them to the previous tools utilized each week (Appendix B). In the first week, I planned to work normally without any adjustment since I had already identified ways to document my hours accordingly, thus knowing when I would work more than 40 hours weekly. However, for the second week, I made lists of the work that needed to be covered daily during morning hours. The reason was to ensure that I would perfectly organize my tasks, including an attempt to plan out my schedule. However, it was unfortunate since I was still working for over 40 hours, but I would assess some progress. The main strength of writing down tasks is that I would view them clearly and estimate how long they would take. For instance, when I needed to leave by 4.30 pm, I made it a routine to pause all remaining works that would take more than 30 minutes and schedule it for the next day. Another important factor I noted during my improvement project’s second week is the need to have more consistent alarms and consider my start time and not just my end-of-shift times. That is because various nursing shifts may need more time, thus making it appropriate to adjust my hours accordingly.
In the 3rd week, I carried forward my second week’s