Using Improvement Science Models to Promote Quality and Safety Term Paper

Using Improvement Science Models to Promote Quality and Safety - Term Paper Example 14). This paper offers an analysis of two improvement models and how they could foster a culture of quality and patient safety and facilitate changes in process that promote positive outcomes. Subsequently, this paper elucidates how one of the models could be used to address prolonger clinic wait times in Brookwood Medical Center and how it relates to one of the IOMs six aims for improving quality and safety. As an example of a quality improvement model, Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) is a quick, chronological, and collective erudition model that presents significant information on factual results relating to the continuing efforts of the health care delivery team (Institute for Healthcare Improvement, 2012). In this model, an initiative for change is recognized in the planning stage, execution and quantification of the initiative conducted in the doing stage, and evaluation of the information to be quantified conducted in the study stage (Ernst et al, 2010). Based on the results of the assessment, a decision to either approve or discard the initiative is done in the acting stage. In other words, change processes are directed by a continuous process of compilation of information (Ernst et al, 2010). Therefore, quality processes that promote patient safety are adopted while strategies to improve on processes or systems resulting to substandard outcomes are initiated. In so doing, a culture of q uality and patient safety is promoted. The second model of improvement is the change acceleration process highlighted by Polk (2011), and is achieved through innovation and the lean six sigma. In the lean sigma method, the need for change must be defined, measured, and analyzed (Polk, 2011). Subsequently, a procedure for remedial actions must be formulated, and the achieved outcome quantified using relevant measures in order to ascertain whether the intended outcome has been achieved (Polk, 2011). This process,