Transformational Impact on Direct Care Nurses' Supporting the Magnet Site Visit.

Exposure to strategic project and workforce preparation for nursing excellence throughout organizational American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet journeys has been observed as positively impacting the escort nurse's personal goal setting and achievement beyond the site visit. This article describes a project undertaken to capture the characteristics of staff nurses serving as Magnet escorts for hospital site visits. The positive relationship of that experience on goal setting and future workplace volunteerism for projects is presented. An association with nurse confidence through perceived self-efficacy is explored. The results have significance for leader and staff involvement in nursing projects and strategic goal achievement.

A statewide collaborative initiative to improve the quality of care for patients with acute myocardial infarction and heart failure.

BACKGROUND: To enhance quality improvement, we created a unique statewide collaboration among 3 organizations: the Virginia Health Quality Center (Virginia's Medicare Quality Improvement Organization), the American College of Cardiology, and the American Heart Association. The goal was to improve discharge measures for acute myocardial infarction and heart failure. METHODS AND RESULTS: In 2004, 29 hospitals participated in the collaborative initiative. Using Medicare data submitted from 2004 through the second quarter of 2006, we analyzed adherence to individual discharge measures and all-or-none appropriate care measures for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and both. To control for differences in hospital characteristics, we were able to match 21 of the participating hospitals with 21 similar nonparticipating hospitals. In this paired analysis, the total appropriate care measure increased from 61% to 77% in participating hospitals compared with an increase from 51% to 60% in nonparticipating hospitals (P<0.0001). A generalized linear mixed model examining the full data set at the patient level failed to show a clear advantage among participating hospitals. Participating hospitals had higher baseline rates for most quality measures, suggesting a possible effect of a prior collaborative. Further analysis of only hospitals that participated in a prior collaborative showed that participants in the current collaborative initiative had higher rates of improvement for 7 of 10 quality measures and appropriate care measures for heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, or both (all P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: We report a unique collaboration of a Medicare Quality Improvement Organization and 2 national organizations to address quality of care for acute myocardial infarction and heart failure. A composite measure of quality (the total appropriate care measure) improved more in the participating hospitals during the timeframe of the intervention, although the greater improvement in this and other measures in the participating hospitals appeared to be dependent on participation in a prior collaborative initiative.

Implementation of a continuous quality improvement program for percutaneous coronary intervention and cardiac surgery at a large community hospital.

BACKGROUND: Continuous quality improvement (CQI) is widely used in other industries and has been promoted as a method for quality control in medicine. The national databases developed by the American College of Cardiology and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons have greatly facilitated data collection for CQI. Hospitals can encounter barriers to CQI, however, which include creating the proper organizational infrastructure and engaging physicians and hospital administrators in the process. These barriers are particularly evident in large community hospitals. METHODS: We describe the organizational infrastructure for CQI, including committee structure, methods of repeated data collection and feedback, and maintenance of data integrity and confidentiality. We report demographic data and clinical outcomes for patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention and coronary artery bypass surgery before and after implementation of our CQI program. RESULTS: Since 1995, we have maintained a CQI process driven by repeated collection of valid, confidential, operator-specific data. We have observed sustained physician and administration participation and buy-in. During the follow-up period, patient complexity increased and observed outcomes improved, although the improvement was clearly multifactorial. CONCLUSIONS: We describe the organization of a CQI program at a large complex community hospital. Our CQI program was successfully implemented, has been sustained, and is associated in observed improvement in patient outcomes. The program described here may be a useful model for other similar hospitals that are attempting to create a program to address quality improvement.