The Role of the Leader in Evaluating Data to Improve Quality and Safety Paper

The Role of the Leader in Evaluating Data to Improve Quality and Safety
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The Role of the Leader in Evaluating Data to Improve Quality and Safety
Patient falls, injury as a result of falling, and fear of falling are major public health issues in today’s ageing society. Falls are a complex and widespread geriatric syndrome that brings about decreased functioning, considerable morbidity, mortality, as well as premature admissions to nursing homes (Johnson et al., 2011). The purpose of this paper is to describe the interpretations of the data pertaining to the patient fall rate on the telemetry unit, the quality management process that would be followed in improving the rates of patient falls on the unit, as well as the leadership characteristics that are required to help improve the rates of patient falls.
Data overview
According to the data, 68 percent of the patients at the telemetry unit are women and the average age of patients is 72.4 years old. Every patient here has been diagnosed with a cardiac diagnosis. Furthermore, almost all patients, that is, 94 percent of them, are on diuretics whereas a small number of them, just 12 percent, have secondary diagnoses of disorientation or confusion.
What these data mean is the higher than acceptable level of patient falls observed on the telemetry unit over the past four months was likely as a result of three things: the diuretics medications that were administered to the patients, the old age of these patients, as well as the patients’ confusion and disorientation. It is notable that drugs such as diuretics have been shown to increase the risk of falls among nursing home residents and a higher dose of a diuretic medication results in an acute surge in their risk of falling (Stein, 2011).
In a certain study, the researchers found that the fall risk in residents of a nursing home increased by over two times within just one day of them getting a new diuretic prescription or an increase in their dosage of diuretic (Stein, 2011). Moreover, old age is a significant risk factor for patient falls and the fall risk increases with an increase in age. Furthermore, being disoriented and confused is also a risk factor for patient falls.
Quality improvement plan
Quality management process: To improve the rates of patient falls at the telemetry unit, the quality management process will entail implementing a number of interventions. These include the following: evaluating the medicines which the elderly patients are currently being administered and decreasing the dosage or withdrawing those medicines which increase the risk of falling, for instance the diuretics. If they are withdrawn, they need to be replaced with a substitute medicine (Johnson et al., 2011; Goh, Chan &  Kuziemsky, 2013). The other intervention entails physical and exercise therapy for preventing falls as well as injuries as a result of falls. Furthermore, a multi-factorial risk evaluation should be conducted on the patients as it has been demonstrated to be always effective in fall prevention (Fagan, 2012). In addition, environmental modifications would be done for instance installing raised toilet seats or grab bars.
Change management ...