One hot topic that has recently gained a relatively large amount of attention over almost all areas of medicine is quality improvement. Hospitals have created dedicated senior-level positions to oversee it, interdisciplinary councils have been formed to research and address it, and employees are reminded daily, if not more often, of their role in implementing it in the form of various quality benchmarks they are held accountable for (such as reduction in the number patient falls, increases in the accuracy of the medical record, and identification of possible information gaps in the system).
As an active participant on my hospital’s quality improvement council, I see first-hand how tedious and arduous the process of identifying and affecting various quality initiatives can be. A truly thoughtful project requires the input of multiple stakeholders including administrators, physicians, nurses, technicians/technologists, receptionists, patients, and caregivers. I bring up the last groups specifically because the main goals of these projects and initiatives are to improve patient care and increase patient satisfaction. Unfortunately, too often, in an effort to complete a project, we make assumptions on behalf of patients and their families and forget to actually ask them their perspectives on the situation.
So what does quality mean in the eyes of a patient? After a recent hospitalization following the birth of my second child, I was quickly reminded of how frightening it can be to be a patient (or in my case, the parent of a patient). Being from the health care field, I was privy to the various safety/quality practices in place to ensure proper name identification, medication administration, fall precautions, and the like.
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