Quality Improvement In Health Care Essay

It is undeniable that the health service in Ireland is evolving constantly, as it faces economic and social challenges such as government budget cuts, our ageing population and subsequent increased chronic illness rate and decreased levels of staff. It can be a struggle to keep up with advancing medical and technological demands, but it is imperative that first-rate patient care remains the number one priority (Department of Health, 2012). Leadership and quality improvement are essential components of an evolving and improving healthcare system. They are indispensable to the growth and advance of healthcare services and to the provision of the highest quality of nursing care to patients. Barr and Dowding (2012), define leadership as a process

If the responsibilities of each team member are clearly defined, plans of action for improvement can be easily drawn up and efficiently executed. The World Health Organisation (2006) describes the different responsibilities of healthcare professionals for quality improvement. The top priority and main responsibility of healthcare professionals is to assure that patients are receiving the highest standard of care available, followed by the responsibility of constantly evaluating the health system to make sure it is performing in an exemplary way. It is important to construe that patients also have definitive responsibilities in quality improvement. These responsibilities lie in recognising their specific individual needs, and, wherever possible, controlling their own health with the necessary support from the healthcare system. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2015) elaborates that it is not just the responsibilities of the team members that need to be outlined, but how the responsibilities are divided out between the specific roles, explaining how a quality improvement team should include a leader who recognises areas in need of improvement and organises plans to do so, a facilitator who collaborates with the leader and ensures the whole team is involved by tracking the team’s progress, and team members, who offer advice and

The HRSA (2011) asserts that the use of data outlines how successful current practices are and compares performances in different healthcare systems. It allows for a baseline level of quality to be established and suggests if changes should be made and the potential outcomes of these changes. Data also documents changes in procedure to evaluate improvements and assess their success. The HRSA (2015) explains how to use data to facilitate quality improvement. It discloses that once a baseline measurement of quality and any potential problems have been documented, a healthcare system can strive for quality improvement by intermittently assessing procedures and improving them as necessary. How regularly assessments occur depends on the procedure in question, but it is recommended that to consistently improve the performance of healthcare staff and the healthcare service itself procedures are analysed and evaluated at least annually, unless otherwise