Why is Quality Improvement (QI) important in pediatric anesthesia?
Quality improvement (QI) is a key part of improving outcomes and services. QI methodology uses cycles of change with continuous monitoring of process outcomes with methods such as Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) or Six Sigma. Key to improving services is measuring outcome with high quality simple data and a local culture open to change and focusing on care quality.
Clear strategies and recommendations for areas of Quality Improvement include:
- Standardization of serious critical event definitions and reporting
- Implementation of current best practice in provision of competent pediatric anesthesia (see 10Ns)
- Development of evidence-based protocols for management and training of serious critical events (see 10Cs)
- Implementation of systems for ensuring maintenance of skills
The Institutional Competences are addressed in ‘Who’, ’Where’, ‘When’, ‘What’ and ‘How’ need to be identified to achieve an optimal outcome for vulnerable children.
Resources
- Quality Improvement Resources. RCoA
- Raising the Standard: a compendium of audit recipes (3rd edition) 2012. RCoA
Learn about …
- Rights of the child (10Rs)
- Personal and institutional competence (5Ws)
- Quality and equilibrium (10Ns)
- Crisis situations (10Cs)
- Research
- Quality Improvement
- Parental discussion