Quality Improvement

Individual Assignment

Every quality improvement project must incorporate a purpose or problem statement. These statements summarize an issue that nurse leaders are seeking to address. As a leader it is important to motivate your team to effect change from an asset-based approach. What assets, skills, talents, strengths can you build on in order to address an area of concern. One way to do so is to re-frame a problem as an opportunity. The purpose of this assignment is to teach you how to utilize existing evidence to craft an opportunity statement. This opportunity statement will be used as the foundation for your change paper. The skills built in these assignments are good foundation for your future capstone or final quality improvement projects.

A. Select the article you will use as the basis for your opportunity statement (article referred to as source article). Identify the opportunity for improvement in healthcare. Present evidence (i.e., supporting data) to substantiate the opportunity for improvement. Include evidence such as epidemiologic data, benchmark data, etc. The supporting data should come from evidence published within the last 5 years.

B. Identify the population of focus. Be very clear about the population of interest by providing specific detail such as: age, gender, race, income, ability/disability, housing status, etc. (include demographic information that is applicable for the identified opportunity)

C. Write a 2-3 sentence opportunity statement that describes the opportunity for improvement, this is only the opportunity, not the proposed intervention.

A template for this assignment is available on the next page.

Template

Source Article (APA citation)

Opportunity for Improvement (1 sentence, identified from the source article)

Population

Supporting Data (no more than three articles)

Opportunity Statement
• Current state – the problem that exists now
• Impact – the effect this is having on the population, their outcomes, long and short-term effects
• Desired state – what the ideal change would be, quantify if you can, e.g. a 20% increase in visits.

References