Healthcare Quality Week: Quality Care and Patient Safety Matters

Jenifer Lauckner, RN; Quality Improvement Advisor

Years ago, I was the nurse taking care of a man on comfort care who was verbally unresponsive.

I told him exactly what my teammate and I would be doing so he wouldn’t be startled when we re positioned him to his side and checked his brief. I relayed to him that I would be massaging his back with lotion after I warmed it in my hands. Before leaving his room, I moistened his mouth with moisture spray, wiped his forehead with a cool cloth, and flipped his pillow. I also applied foam protectors on his oxygen tubing behind his ears so it wouldn’t rub, checked his catheter to make sure it was not kinked, checked his IV site, put his call light within reach and told his family to let me know if he seemed restless or needed anything.

Not much later, while I was charting at the nurse’s station, his daughter came to thank me for everything that I did to make her dad more comfortable. These simple gestures of care helped their family feel more at ease knowing that he was in good hands.

It was this interaction that justified I was giving the best quality of care that this man deserved. It is also how I would want to be treated if I was in his place.

“What Matters” is a simple, yet profound concept that is key to creating deeply personal engagements with patients and their family members, a deeper understanding of what really matters to them and is the foundation of developing genuine partnerships for co-creating health.

Stephanie Meduna, RN, BSN; Quality Improvement Advisor

My brother was going in to have surgery on his right wrist. When the physician came in he said “we will be operating on your left arm today correct.” My brother said “no, it is my right wrist.” Apparently the records had mentioned the left arm in several places. A ‘time out’ was taken in the operating room, the case and surgery were discussed among the team. Thankfully, my brother’s right wrist was operated on.

‘Time outs’ prior to surgery are one of those best practices put into place to help prevent wrong site surgeries.

A time-out is the surgical team’s short pause, just before incision, to confirm that they are about to perform the correct procedure on the correct body part of the correct patient. A time-out can be easily performed, does not require any specific qualification or educational courses, can be repeated as many times as necessary and costs nothing.