QI Archives - Page 4 of 4 - Off the Charts

A Nursing Conference Focused on Quality and Safety, and a Big ‘What If?’

By Maureen ‘Shawn’ Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

“What would quality in hospitals look like if health care institutions were as single-minded about serving clients as the Disney organization?”

Last week I attended the 2015 American Nurses Association Quality Conference in Orlando. The conference, which had its origins in the annual National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) conference, drew close to 1,000 attendees. Here’s a quick overview of hot topics and the keynote speech by the new Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, plus a note on an issue crucial to health care quality that I wish I’d heard more about during the conference.

Most sessions presented quality improvement (QI) projects and many were well done. There were some topics I hadn’t seen covered all that much, such as reducing the discomfort of needlesticks, enhancing postop bowel recovery, and promoting sleep. But projects aimed at preventing central line infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), and pressure ulcers ruled the sessions. These of course are among the hospital-associated conditions that might cause a hospital to be financially penalized by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The ANA also had a couple of sessions on preventing CAUTIs by means of a tool it developed in the Partnership for Patients initiative of the CMS to reduce health care–associated infections.

The keynote by Robert McDonald, the fairly new Secretary of […]

Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2016-11-21T13:03:03-05:00February 9th, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing research, safe staffing|2 Comments

Misplacing Our Focus on Quality Improvement

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

I welcome manuscripts written by nurses in clinical practice, especially comprehensive updates on managing a clinical syndrome or a common problem that readers would find informative and interesting. I call these the “meat and potato” papers—the ones that provide substantial content, the need-to-know information that will help nurses provide quality, evidence-based care. The best ones discuss the physiology and pathology underlying clinical symptoms, practice implications for ongoing monitoring and management, and patient and family teaching and concerns.

The other papers I value are those that describe quality improvement initiatives or processes that improve outcomes and, by following the SQUIRE (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence) guidelines, are sufficiently detailed so that others can replicate them. (For information on what we seek to publish, see a recent blog post.)

Lately, though, I’m seeing more and more submissions that are not so much focused on how to use best practices to improve care, but rather on ways to improve scores on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. The authors typically describe the impetus for the improvement as low scores, get administrative support to set benchmarks for improving scores, and define success as improved scores. Often the changes are clinically insignificant but scores increase, so everyone is happy.

While the HCAHPS is a national measure that has been adopted as a measure of quality, it’s important to keep in mind that it measures […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:07:44-05:00April 24th, 2013|nursing perspective|1 Comment

Article Types, Topics of Interest, and Other Considerations for Prospective AJN Authors

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

I recently wrote a post that attempted to give readers a clearer sense of what we are looking for in article submissions and what we are not looking for: “My Professor Said to Submit My Paper (We Hope They Also Told You This).”

This post will just provide a quick overview of the types of articles we publish, as well as a plug for why it’s good to be published in AJN.

In terms of impact factor, AJN ranks 29/95 among ranked nursing journals, with an impact factor of 1.119. (Nursing journals with higher impact factors tend to be specialty research journals, whereas AJN publishes a broad range of content in addition to research, and for a variety of audiences.) Through our robust print, digital, iPad, institutional, and social media channels, AJN reaches more nurses than any other nursing journal.

We publish original research, quality improvement (QI), and review articles as primary feature articles and as CE articles. We also publish shorter, focused columns. All submissions must be evidence based and are peer-reviewed.

Clinical features should cover epidemiology, pathology, current research/“what’s new” in knowledge and/or treatment, nursing implications. There is no specific limit for word count, though feature articles are usually in the range of 6,000 to 10,000 words. (We have done two-part and three-part series for larger papers.) For examples of feature articles, see any of the CE articles on our Web site, […]

Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2016-11-21T13:08:08-05:00March 14th, 2013|nursing research|0 Comments

When Timely Nurse Removal of Urinary Catheters Reduces UTI Rate

By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, AJN clinical editor

Ever since we started the Cultivating Quality column at AJN, manuscripts featuring evidence-based quality improvement projects have been pouring in. There is a lot of great work being done at the bedside by practicing nurses, and this column provides the opportunity to share their ideas with others.

This month’s Cultivating Quality installment, Reducing Rates of Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection, comes from Joyce Wenger, MS, RN, the infection control performance improvement coordinator at Lancaster General Hospital, Lancaster, PA. According to the CDC, urinary tract infections (UTIs) account for more than 30% of hospital-associated infections, and almost all are “caused by instrumentation of the urinary tract.” Nursing staff were able to reduce catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) rates using a three-pronged approach “beginning with education, progressing to tests of new and better products, and ending with the nurse-driven protocol for catheter removal.”

That last part is my favorite. In most facilities a doctor or nurse practitioner has to write an order before a Foley catheter can be removed from a patient. Patients may end up spending several days at increased risk for UTI because of an unnecessary urinary catheter in place. This hospital came up with a plan to give nurses the autonomy to remove them—which makes sense, since they’re the ones checking the patient daily. The team at Lancaster General created the following list of criteria that patients need to meet in order to maintain […]