ABSTRACT
Significant gaps in quality and patient safety in the US health-care system have been identified and were reported in the past decade by the Institute of Medicine. Despite recognition of these gaps in "knowing versus doing," change in health care is slow and difficult. The quality improvement and clinical safety movement is increasing among US medical centers. Our health science center implemented the UT System Clinical Safety and Effectiveness course, providing project-based teaching of quality-improvement tools and principles of patient safety. A quality-improvement project that increased healthcare workers' influenza vaccination rate by 17.8% from that in 2008 to a rate of 76.6% in 2009 serves as a paradigm of how physicians can lead quality-improvement project teams to narrow the quality chasm (1). Local efforts to narrow the chasm are discussed in the present paper, including inter-professional education in quality improvement and clinical safety.
Subject(s)
Academic Medical Centers , Health Personnel , Influenza Vaccines , Influenza, Human/prevention & control , Occupational Exposure , Occupational Health Services , Quality Improvement , Quality of Health Care , Seasons , Academic Medical Centers/standards , Attitude of Health Personnel , Education, Medical, Continuing , Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice , Health Services Research , Humans , Immunization Programs , Infectious Disease Transmission, Professional-to-Patient/prevention & control , Influenza, Human/transmission , Influenza, Human/virology , Occupational Health Services/standards , Texas , WorkforceABSTRACT
For a healthcare worker seasonal influenza vaccination quality improvement project, interventions included support of leadership, distribution of vaccine kits, grand rounds, an influenza website, a screensaver, e-mails, phone messages, and audit feedback. Vaccination rates increased from 58.8% to 76.6% (P < .01). Quality improvement increased the voluntary vaccination rate but did not achieve a rate more than 80%.
