Enhancing Quality and Safety for Patient Handoffs

Topic of choice is Patient Handoffs.

For this assessment, be sure to focus on an organizational setting. This could be a primary care office, urgent care, mobile clinic, hospital ED, rural clinic, etc. The setting will be the hospital. Then use the literature to support the problem and solution in the organization. Reflect on costs to that organization/setting and what nurses can do to coordinate the care within the setting. Reflect on stakeholders who may be involved.

Be sure that your plan addresses the following, which corresponds to the grading criteria in the rubric. Please study the rubric carefully so you understand what is needed for a distinguished score.

• Explain factors leading to a specific patient safety risk.
• Explain evidence-based and best-practice solutions to improve patient safety related to a specific patient-safety risk and reduce costs.
• Explain how nurses can help coordinate care to increase patient safety and reduce costs.
• Identify stakeholders with whom nurses would need to coordinate to drive safety enhancements.
• Communicate using writing that is clear, logical, and professional, with correct grammar and spelling, using current APA style.
• 35 pages of content plus title and reference pages.
• Number of references: Cite a minimum of 4 sources of scholarly or professional evidence that support your findings and considerations. Resources should be no more than 5 years old.

Course competencies and scoring guide criteria:

• Competency 1: Analyze the elements of a successful quality improvement initiative.
• Explain evidence-based and best-practice solutions to improve patient safety related to a specific patient safety risk and reduce costs.
• Competency 2: Analyze factors that lead to patient safety risks.
• Explain factors leading to a specific patient-safety risk in a healthcare setting.
• Competency 4: Explain the nurse’s role in coordinating care to enhance quality and reduce costs.
• Explain how nurses can help coordinate care to increase patient safety and reduce costs.
• Identify stakeholders with whom nurses would coordinate to drive safety enhancements with a specific safety quality issue.
• Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly, evidence-based strategies to communicate in a manner that supports safe and effective patient care.
• Organize content so ideas flow logically with smooth transitions; contains few errors in grammar or punctuation, word choice, and spelling.
• Apply APA formatting to in-text citations and references exhibiting nearly flawless adherence to APA format.