Department of Performance Improvement
-Quality-
Quality & Safety
From the Quality & Safety tab on the South County Hospital website it states that: "South County Health is dedicated to providing you with the highest quality care in a setting mindful of your safety and privacy. We are consistently scrutinizing the quality of the care we provide by participating in patient care initiatives, evaluating outcomes and processes, reviewing performance data and monitoring patient satisfaction both through independent third-party assessment and internal review by our Quality Improvement Team."
South County Health- South County Hospital. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.southcountyhealth.org/
My Personal Experience
During my time in the Department of Performance Improvement I had many opportunities to be involved with this branch of the hospital. I worked with the online medical records to collect data to be included with a stroke phone call survey and finding proper documentation that needed to be included with patients transferring to other hospitals. Furthermore, I worked on high reliability organization (HRO) data entry which was collected from a course that was twice a week, every week, that staff members took to gain knowledge on how to improve on safety and correct interaction/ services to patients.
From all of these tasks I learned a great deal about Excel, communication via telephone, proper data entry skills, how to work with the hospitals medical records system, how to read and understand someones medical records, and more.
Stroke Patient Telephone Survey
The biggest learning growth I had was with the stroke telephone survey. This was looking into the quality of care the hospital gave to individuals that came due to a stroke or they were experiencing symptoms. I had to understand the reason behind calling stroke patients, the different types of risks involved, and effective communication skills. Many times patients could not answer due to the severity of their stroke so the next of kin would answer the questions or a nurse would tell us and we would have to write that this patient was unable to complete the survey. Other times the individual was not available, indicated by a voicemail, and we would have to leave a message. Additionally, for this survey I was only allowed to call a total of three times and if the patient did not answer they would be stated as unable to complete. Using an Excel spread sheet it had all the patients information needed (telephone number, name, medical record number, age, gender) and had the questions that I asked them so the raw data could be created into a graph or table. If complaints were discussed I addressed them by asking them to call a Liaison within the hospital that would take care of these complaints so staff members and departments could improve their services.
It was challenging calling patients and asking them to take a survey because many people when they hear that its a survey they instantly think negatively towards it and believe it is time consuming. However, through trial and error I learned how to modify a script and make it more efficient towards the patients and their reactions.
Attached is a PDF powerpoint file explaining what a stroke is, data I collected, survey questions used, risk factors, and more.
stroke_patient_phone_call_survey.pdf | |
File Size: | 1546 kb |
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