Analysis: Six Sigma And Continuous Quality Improvement

This paper explores Quality improvement (QI), which is essential for healthcare managers to identify and solve issues in a meaningful way. The two most common approaches to QI is Six Sigma and Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) (Williams, Savage, & Stambaugh, 2011). For the purpose of this paper, the current quality problem within the Respiratory department will be identified and explained. The step by step process of CQI will be discussed and applied to manage and resolve the identified issue.

It is essential to understand what CQI is in order to implement it correctly into practice. “Put simply, CQI is a philosophy that encourages all health care team members to continuously ask: “How are we doing?” and “Can we do it better?”

“CQI can be defined as an organizational process in which employee teams identify and address problems in their work processes” (Williams, et. al., 2011). We have many new employees that have had a weak orientation to the organizational culture, policy and procedures. Adding to these issues, are new ventilators; that the rep has not come out to give support in the form of in servicing staff. To begin the CQI process I would follow the model of FOCUS (Find, Organize, Clarify, Understand, and Select) then PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, and Act) (Williams, et. al., 2011). I have identified the problem, and through investigation have discovered the issues. Next, I would like to clarify and understand the issues by gathering feedback from staff and looking into incident reports. Second, organizing a team to determine future action and mapping the process will commence. The team will consist of RT director, manager, a seasoned staff RT, the 2 PICU head attending physicians and medical director. Our desired outcome is for everyone to feel confident with all respiratory therapist’s ability to manage the ventilator in the PICU setting including the RT. Identified customers are the patients, nurses, and doctors. Data will need to be collected in order to see where the issues exist and how often. Tracking the errors or issues that arise will help to guide education that is provided to the RT’s. The group will brainstorm possible causes to identify weak areas of skill in order to decide which training is needed most and how often we should schedule it. The ideas for cause and effect will be documented on a fishbone diagram. Then data can be analyzed from the errors