For this assessment, you can use a supplied template to conduct a root-cause analysis. The completed assessment will be a scholarly paper focusing on a quality or safety issue in a health care setting of your choice as well as a safety improvement plan.

INTRODUCTION

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.

As you prepare for this assessment, it would be an excellent choice to complete the Quality and Safety Improvement Plan Knowledge Base activity and to review the various assessment resources, all of which will help you build your knowledge of key concepts and terms related to quality and safety improvement. The terms and concepts will be helpful as you prepare your Root-Cause Analysis and Safety Improvement Plan. Activities are not graded and demonstrate course engagement.

PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT

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.

SCENARIO

For this assessment, use the specific safety concern identified in your previous assessment as the subject of a root-cause analysis and safety improvement plan.

INSTRUCTIONS

The purpose of this assessment is to demonstrate your understanding of and ability to analyze a root cause of a specific safety concern in a health care setting. You will create a plan to improve the safety of patients related to the safety quality issue present in your Assessment Supplement PDF in Assessment 1. 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, provide a rationale for your plan.

Use the template to help you to stay organized and concise. This will guide you step-by-step through the root cause analysis process.

Additionally, be sure that your plan addresses the following, which corresponds to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Please study the scoring guide carefully so you understand what is needed for a distinguished score.

• Analyze the root cause of a specific patient safety issue in an organization.
• Apply evidence-based and best-practice strategies to address the safety issue.
• Create a feasible, evidence-based safety improvement plan to address a specific patient safety issue.
• Identify organizational resources that could be leveraged to improve your plan.
• Communicate in writing that is clear, logical, and professional, with correct grammar and spelling, using current APA style.

Example Assessment: You may use the following to give you an idea of what a Proficient or higher rating on the scoring guide would look like but keep in mind that your Assessment 2 will focus on the quality issue you selected in Assessment 1.

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ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS

• Length of submission: Use the provided Root-Cause Analysis and Improvement Plan template to create a 46 page root cause analysis and safety improvement plan pertaining to a specific patient safety issue.
• Number of references: Cite a minimum of 3 sources of scholarly or professional evidence that support your findings and considerations. Resources should be no more than 5 years old.
• APA formatting: Format references and citations according to current APA style.

COMPETENCIES MEASURED

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the course competencies through the following assessment scoring guide criteria:

• Competency 1: Analyze the elements of a successful quality improvement initiative.
  • Apply evidence-based and best-practice strategies to address the safety issue.
  • Create a feasible, evidence-based safety improvement plan to address a specific patient safety issue.
• Competency 2: Analyze factors that lead to patient safety risks.
  • Analyze the root cause of a specific patient safety issue in an organization.
• Competency 3: Identify organizational interventions to promote patient safety.
  • Identify organizational resources that could be leveraged to improve your plan.
• Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly, evidence-based strategies to communicate in a manner that supports safe and effective patient care.
  • Organize content so ideas flow logically with smooth transitions; contains few errors in grammar or punctuation, word choice, and spelling.
  • Apply APA formatting to in-text citations and references exhibiting nearly flawless adherence to APA format