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 healthcare setting of your choice as well as a safety improvement plan.
As patient safety concerns continue to be addressed in healthcare 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 healthcare 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.
Root Cause Analysis
Nursing practice is governed by healthcare 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.
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.
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 healthcare setting. You will create a plan to improve the safety of patients related to the safety quality issue presented 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 healthcare setting, provide a rationale for your plan.
Use the Root-Cause Analysis and Safety Improvement Plan [DOCX] template to help you to stay organized and concise.
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 patient safety issue or a specific sentinel event in an organization.
- Apply evidence-based and best-practice strategies to address the safety issue or sentinel event.
- Create a viable, evidence-based safety improvement plan.
- Identify existing 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.
Root Cause Analysis
- Length of submission: Use the provided template to create a 4–6 page root-cause analysis and safety improvement plan. A title page is not required but you must include a reference list as per the template.
- 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. Use the BSN Nursing Program Library Guideas needed.
- APA formatting: Format references and citations according to current APA style. See the APA Module.
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:
- Competency 1: Analyze the elements of a successful quality improvement initiative.,
- Apply evidence-based and best-practice strategies to address a safety issue or sentinel event.,
- 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 sentinel event or a patient safety issue in an organization.,
- Competency 3: Identify organizational interventions to promote patient safety,
- Identify existing organizational resources that could be leveraged to improve a 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.
