1. Identify the clinical issue that will be the focus of your Quality Improvement project.
The importance of undertaking and implementing quality improvement project in the healthcare environment cannot be understated. It would serve to boost the performance in a specific healthcare environment. Optimization of sepsis care is the first clinical issue that the quality improvement project would focus on. Sepsis is becoming a major health concern globally as there is high risk of death when one gets it. Specifically, delayed sepsis identification has been one of the biggest impediments to achieving desirable health outcomes among patients. However, integrating an analytical system as part of the quality improvement project will help in optimizing sepsis care. Specifically, this will involve early identification of sepsis through use of a robust data-driven approach. Developing this type of analytical system such as machine learning would help clinicians to have real-time actionable data that will then aid in boost early detection of sepsis (Klompas et al., 2020). Consequently, requisite health interventions would be implemented. On top of this, there would be rapid intervention concerning severe sepsis and this will help reduce mortality and improve health outcomes among patients. One of the most significant challenges when dealing with sepsis is that scientists have not been able to come up with an approved medicine that can help in targeting the impaired or aggressive immune system. For this reason, the need for clinicians to have access to high quality and robust analytical systems aimed at detecting sepsis would be crucial.
2. Provide rationale for the need to change the status quo.
Additionally, the current status quo with respect to sepsis is that there is lack of a robust analytical system aimed at detecting and identifying sepsis at an early stage. Globally, there is an ongoing debate especially in the healthcare industry regarding the exact timing of treatment for sepsis. In this perspective, incorporating a robust early detection and identification system for sepsis can be vital in boosting sepsis survival rates globally. Clinicians are the first line of care especially for patients who are at a critical stage of sepsis. There exist various reasons why there is need to shift from the status quo regarding sepsis and implement actionable, efficient and robust analytical frameworks for sepsis. First, it will aid in saving many lives of people affected by sepsis. The analytical system will aid in early detection, identification and diagnosis of sepsis by clinicians thus boosting survival rates and achieve desirable outcomes among patients. The cost of treating sepsis especially at later stages can be very high. Increased cost can make many patients shy away from accessing such care as they cannot afford it. However, early detection and diagnosis is not expensive and in this case, patients would achieve desirable outcomes within a short time (Kim & Park, 2019). Eventually, many lives of patients with sepsis will be saved thus positively impacting families, communities and nations.
3. Identify best practices from the literature related to the issues.
In this, increasing training especially for clinicians and nurses will go a long way in significantly improving sepsis recognition. Specifically, training them on how to use analytical frameworks for sepsis would be very crucial. Secondly, integrating a robust educational framework in sepsis ought to be leveraged by the global health industry to ensure high quality care and standardization. Specifically, the educational programmes anchored on sepsis would incorporate early identification, appropriate prescription and boosting care of patients (Rello & Rubulotta, 2018). Lastly, there is need for increased funding towards research anchored on sepsis to develop and implement high quality treatment plans for patients thus improving health outcomes in the long run.
Reference
Kim, H. I., & Park, S. (2019). Sepsis: Early recognition and optimized treatment. Tuberculosis and respiratory diseases, 82(1), 6-14.
Klompas, M., Osborn, T. M., & Rhee, C. (2020). Who owns sepsis? Annals of internal medicine, 172(3), 210-211.
Rello, & Rubulotta. (2018). Best practice for sepsis. PubMed Central (PMC). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5906331/
