Hospitals With Outstanding Nursing Quality Share 4 Key Traits

Five organizations were recognized at the conference for extraordinary nursing quality:

• University of Kansas Hospital, Kansas City, KS – academic medical Center
• Medical Center of the Rockies, Loveland, CO – community hospital
• Poudre Valley Hospital, Fort Collins, CO – teaching hospital
• Children’s Hospital & Medical Center, Omaha, NE – pediatric hospital
• Craig Hospital, Englewood, CO – rehabilitation hospital

“The NDNQI Award recognizes a hospital’s ability to identify areas for improvement in its nursing performance and to design and implement effective strategies to achieve better patient outcomes,” said Daley. “The common traits of the award-winning hospitals are strong leadership, teamwork, commitment to ongoing improvement in patient care quality, continuous staff education, and efficient use of resources.”

Hospitals that have demonstrated excellent outcomes in nursing-sensitive quality measures—such as pressure ulcers, falls, and catheter-associated urinary tract infections—share similar traits. They have identified systematic processes for quality improvement that involve staff in the identification and measurement.

1. Nurses must be actively involved. Each unit has different patient populations and different quality challenges and the most effective performance improvement arises organically from that culture. Nurses on each unit must be actively involved in collecting data, completing chart reviews, benchmarking results, and sharing results.

2. Quality outcomes should be visible. Top performing organizations communicate openly and frequently about quality data.

View All Comments Make a Comment

Comments are moderated. Please be patient.