International Journal for Quality in Health Care

Background Patient safety is a key quality issue for health systems. Healthcare acquired adverse events (AEs) compromise safety and quality; therefore, their reporting and monitoring is a patient safety priority. Although administrative datasets are potentially efficient tools for monitoring rates of adverse events, concerns remain over the accuracy of their data. Chart review validation studies are required to explore the potential of administrative data to inform research and health policy. This review aims to present an overview of the methodological approaches and strategies used to validate rates of adverse events in administrative data through chart review...

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BACKGROUND: As part of the new Flanders Quality Model (FlaQuM) towards sustainable quality management systems, a co-creation roadmap with six primary drivers and 19 building blocks that guides healthcare organisations has been developed. Currently, no assessment tool is available to monitor hospitals' quality management systems implementation according to this co-creation roadmap. Therefore, we aimed to measure the maturity of the implementation of the FlaQuM co-creation roadmap in hospitals...

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BACKGROUND: Falls were among the most common adverse nursing events. The incidence of falls in patients with neuropsychiatric disorders was high, and the occurrence of falls not only caused physical and psychological harm to patients but also led to medical disputes. Therefore, interventions for falls prevention were essential, but evaluations of the intervention process were lacking. METHODS: In this study, a process management program to prevent falls based on the "structure-process-outcome" quality evaluation model was designed and applied to the clinical practice of falls prevention in hospitalized patients with neuropsychiatric disorders...

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BACKGROUND: A key component of professional accountability programs is online reporting tools that allow hospital staff to report co-worker unprofessional behaviour. Few studies have analysed data from these systems to further understand the nature or impact of unprofessional behaviour amongst staff. Ethos is a whole-of-hospital professional accountability program that includes an online messaging system. Ethos has now been implemented across multiple Australian hospitals. This study examined reported unprofessional behaviour that staff indicated created a risk to patient safety...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

BACKGROUND: Quality of care has been systematically monitored in hospitals in high-income countries to ensure adequate care. However, in low- and middle-income countries, quality indicators are not readily measured. The primary aim of this study was to assess to what extent it was feasible to monitor the quality of Intensive care in an ongoing health emergency, and the secondary aim was to assess a quality of care intervention (twinning project) focused on Intensive Care Unit (ICU) quality of care in public hospitals in Lebanon...

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic drove many healthcare systems worldwide to postpone elective surgery to increase healthcare capacity, manpower and reduce infection risk to staff. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of an elective surgery postponement policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on surgical volumes and patient outcomes for 3 emergency bellwether procedures. METHODS: A retrospective cohort study of patients who underwent any of the 3 emergency procedures (Caesarean section (CS), emergency laparotomy (EL) and open fracture (OF) fixation) between 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2021 was conducted using clinical and surgical data from electronic medical records...

BACKGROUND: Biopharmaceuticals are complex biological molecules that require careful storage and handling to ensure medication integrity. In this study, a work system analysis of real-world protein drug (PD) handling was performed with the following goals: identify main barriers and facilitators for successful adherence to accepted recommendations in PD handling, analyse differences in two organisations, and define a Best Current Practice in the real-life handling of PDs based on the results of the work system analysis...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Patients can experience medication-related harm and hospital readmission because they do not understand or adhere to post-hospital medication instructions. Increasing patient medication literacy and, in turn, participation in medication conversations could be a solution. The purposes of this study were to co-design and test an intervention to enhance patient participation in hospital discharge medication communication. In terms of methods, co-design, a collaborative approach where stakeholders design solutions to problems, was used to develop a prototype medication communication intervention...

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a primary cause of morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients. VTE risk assessment is a crucial part of the VTE prevention guideline. However, VTE risk assessment was not consistently undertaken for admitted patients. The aim of this study was to identify whether a quality improvement project implemented to change documentation of VTE risk assessment for hospitalized patients impacted patient safety by decreasing the rate of VTE incidences. The study was set in a 600+ bed acute hospital that provides medical and surgical services for adult patients during the period October 2018-September 2020...

Allied health primary contact clinic models of care have increasingly been used as a strategy to increase public health service capacity. A recent systematic review found little consistency or agreement on how primary contact clinics are evaluated. The concept of value of primary contact clinics, which has important implications for evaluation, has not yet been explored in-depth. To explore allied health clinicians' perceptions of the value of allied health primary contact clinics, with the goal of informing an evaluation framework, a descriptive qualitative approach utilizing semi-structured interviews was employed...

Several health policy institutes recommend reducing the number of indicators monitored by hospitals to better focus on indicators most relevant to local contexts. To determine which indicators are the most appropriate to eliminate, one must understand how indicator selection processes are undertaken. This study classifies hospital indicator selection processes and analyzes how they align with practices outlined in the 5-P Indicator Selection Process Framework. This qualitative, multiple case study examined indicator selection processes used by four large acute care hospitals in Ontario, Canada...

Primary healthcare facilities are the bedrock for achieving universal health coverage (UHC) because of their closeness to the grassroots and provision of healthcare at low cost. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, the access and quality of health services in public primary healthcare centres (PHCs) are suboptimal, linked with persistent occurrence of absenteeism of health workers. We used a UHC framework developed by the World Health Organization-African Region to examine the link between absenteeism and the possible achievement of UHC in Nigeria...