This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.
Clinical audit is at the heart of clinical governance. Provides the mechanisms for reviewing the quality of everyday care provided to patients with common conditions like asthma or diabetes. Builds on a long history of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals reviewing case notes and seeking ways to serve their patients better. Addresses the quality issues systematically and explicitly, providing reliable information. Can confirm the quality of clinical services and highlight the need for improvement. Provides clear statements of principle about clinical audit in the NHS.
Evidence Based Practice in Primary Health Care is split into two sections. The frist discusses how the individual can apply evidence based medicine in the clinical setting, and the second covers the wider issue of changes in organisation and strategy to promote better and more effective delivery of care within a practice or primary care group. Chapters are writtten by leading specialists in evidence based primary care from Australlia, the UK,and mainland Europe.
Clinical audit is essential for demonstrating performance for the quality and outcomes framework of the GP Contract. This completely up to date manual uses a practical ‘how-to-do-it’ approach, linked directly to the GP Contract, to make the undertaking of clinical audit a positive and rewarding exercise for both patient care and practice finance. By using examples of clinical audit from around twenty different clinical fields, Clinical Audit in Primary Care provides tips and advice that can be integrated into everyday practice. The recommended process will enable managers, doctors, nurses and clinical staff to collect the data painlessly and to draw meaningful results from it. Its principles will also provide practical guidance to pharmacists and others in the multidisciplinary team involved in clinical audit.
This book is essential reading for all those who undertake clinical audit or are training to do so, including health practitioners, managers and commissioners in the NHS. It will also be useful to patients who contribute to audit governance.
The successful implementation of evidence into practice is dependent on aligning the available evidence to the particular context through the active ingredient of facilitation. Designed to support the widely recognised PARIHS framework, which works as a guide to plan, action and evaluate the implementation of evidence into practice, this book provides a very practical ‘how-to’ guide for facilitating the whole process. This text discusses: undertaking an initial diagnosis of the context and reaching a consensus on the evidence to be implemented; how to link the research evidence with clinical and patients’ experience and local information in the form of audit data or patient and staff feedback; the range of diagnostic, consensus building and stakeholder consultation methods that can be helpful; a description of facilitator roles and facilitation methods, tools and techniques; some of theories that underpin the PARIHS framework and how these have been integrated to inform a revised version of PARIHS Including internationally-sourced case study examples to illustrate how the facilitation role and facilitation skills have been applied in a range of different health care settings, this is the ideal text for those interested in leading or facilitating evidence based implementation projects, from the planning stage through to evaluation.
"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/
Using Evidence to Guide Nursing Practice 2e is an invaluable 'how-to' guide for students and experienced nurses alike. Emphasis is placed on how to develop an evidence-based culture in the workplace, support clinicians to make decisions using the best available evidence and translating this evidence into practice. This new edition is divided into five concise sections which guide readers from an examination of evidence, to developing a workplace culture that supports Evidence-Based Practice. It demonstrates how to locate and appraise evidence, how to evaluate practice and finally how to translate evidence into practice with a new applied case study included. - includes two new chapters; 'Locating and appraising the evidence' and ' Evidence to inform nursing practice: An applied approach' - highlights Evidence-based Practice (EBP) initiatives and demonstrates how to develop an evidence-based culture in the workplace - includes Step-by-step guides to undertaking a systematic review, a clinical audit and a program evaluation - each chapter will have contributions from experienced academics and clinicians across Australia so as to ensure health industry relevance and academic rigour are addressed
Advances in medical, biomedical and health services research have reduced the level of uncertainty in clinical practice. Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) complement this progress by establishing standards of care backed by strong scientific evidence. CPGs are statements that include recommendations intended to optimize patient care. These statements are informed by a systematic review of evidence and an assessment of the benefits and costs of alternative care options. Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust examines the current state of clinical practice guidelines and how they can be improved to enhance healthcare quality and patient outcomes. Clinical practice guidelines now are ubiquitous in our healthcare system. The Guidelines International Network (GIN) database currently lists more than 3,700 guidelines from 39 countries. Developing guidelines presents a number of challenges including lack of transparent methodological practices, difficulty reconciling conflicting guidelines, and conflicts of interest. Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust explores questions surrounding the quality of CPG development processes and the establishment of standards. It proposes eight standards for developing trustworthy clinical practice guidelines emphasizing transparency; management of conflict of interest ; systematic review-guideline development intersection; establishing evidence foundations for and rating strength of guideline recommendations; articulation of recommendations; external review; and updating. Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust shows how clinical practice guidelines can enhance clinician and patient decision-making by translating complex scientific research findings into recommendations for clinical practice that are relevant to the individual patient encounter, instead of implementing a one size fits all approach to patient care. This book contains information directly related to the work of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), as well as various Congressional staff and policymakers. It is a vital resource for medical specialty societies, disease advocacy groups, health professionals, private and international organizations that develop or use clinical practice guidelines, consumers, clinicians, and payers.
The authors of this book set out a system of safety strategies and interventions for managing patient safety on a day-to-day basis and improving safety over the long term. These strategies are applicable at all levels of the healthcare system from the frontline to the regulation and governance of the system. There have been many advances in patient safety, but we now need a new and broader vision that encompasses care throughout the patient’s journey. The authors argue that we need to see safety through the patient’s eyes, to consider how safety is managed in different contexts and to develop a wider strategic and practical vision in which patient safety is recast as the management of risk over time. Most safety improvement strategies aim to improve reliability and move closer toward optimal care. However, healthcare will always be under pressure and we also require ways of managing safety when conditions are difficult. We need to make more use of strategies concerned with detecting, controlling, managing and responding to risk. Strategies for managing safety in highly standardised and controlled environments are necessarily different from those in which clinicians constantly have to adapt and respond to changing circumstances. This work is supported by the Health Foundation. The Health Foundation is an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK. The charity’s aim is a healthier population in the UK, supported by high quality health care that can be equitably accessed. The Foundation carries out policy analysis and makes grants to front-line teams to try ideas in practice and supports research into what works to make people’s lives healthier and improve the health care system, with a particular emphasis on how to make successful change happen. A key part of the work is to make links between the knowledge of those working to deliver health and health care with research evidence and analysis. The aspiration is to create a virtuous circle, using what works on the ground to inform effective policymaking and vice versa. Good health and health care are vital for a flourishing society. Through sharing what is known, collaboration and building people’s skills and knowledge, the Foundation aims to make a difference and contribute to a healthier population.
