Assessment Title

Quality Management Report

Task Description

Undertaking a clinical audit, as part of a quality management process, occurs in all imaging practices on a cyclical basis. In this assessment, you will complete a small part of a clinical audit. Successful completion of this assessment is a course requirement of the Australian Sonographers Accreditation Registry (ASAR).

You will prepare a 2000 word (+/- 10%) report about quality management in a medical imaging workplace. This will include identifying adverse events, identifying contributing factors, near misses or potential adverse events and suggesting recommendations for quality improvement.

Purpose:

Quality practice in healthcare aims to enhance patient care through reduction in morbidity and mortality. When an adverse event in health care occurs, it can have devastating and far-reaching effects. It may have an impact on the reputation of the healthcare organisation, the service or the profession within which the incident occurred and impact those directly involved such as patients, relatives, staff and visitors.

Details:

You will complete a report on actual or possible adverse events, near-misses, quality management factors, risk assessment and patient safety in a Medical Imaging Department. Your responses can include your own, or a colleague's experiences or observations in any clinical sonography environment.

This assessment task involves completing a series of tasks. Many of these require understanding of quality management terminology and concepts to explain your experiences and recommendations. Explanations of terminology and the relevance of various findings are in your prescribed text. This text includes worked examples of many of your tasks below. 

Complete the following tasks to produce your report:

1. Describe problems in the sonographic environment and identify contributory factors.

    a. List 5 (five) adverse events from within a clinical sonographic department and describe one (1) in depth. Identify these from personal observations, oral recollections by colleagues or written accounts. For example for this would be: not correctly identifying the patient.

    b. Identify contributory factors: Complete a Fishbone diagram for one adverse event from part 1a. In the Fishbone diagram, you must identify the root cause(s) of this event. This information will enable you to construct a strategy of prevention or minimisation. A completed example  of a Fishbone diagram is on the unit Moodle site to guide you.

2. Developing a model action plan for change to improve care is time and work intensive. It requires a framework for quality task force participants to follow, without skipping steps. One such problem-solving model is the FADE method of effective problem solving (Krasker et al. 1992). Analyse one adverse event described in question 1 using part of the FADE method (focus, analyse, develop and execute) of effective problem solving. Details of the FADE method are on the unit Moodle site. Your text is a key source of information for this task. Note: You will not be undertaking the ‘execute’ part of the FADE method.

3. Complete quality management tasks (a-e) below about one (1) of the adverse events identified in part 1.

    Your text is a key source of information for this task.

a. Management causation scale, describe whether medical management rather than disease process caused an adverse event

b. Medical management analysis severity scale, to rate the severity and preventability of an adverse event

c. An error cause scale.

d. Assessment of the preventability of adverse errors.

e. What further action would you recommend?

    Include discussion of opportunities to implement proactive risk management methods, such as barriers, trigger tools, benchmarking, indicators, national databases and methods to facilitate patients taking an active role in prevention

4. Complete a risk assessment matrix for five (5) possible hazards in the clinical workplace.

    This will involve describing five (5) possible hazards and the risk(s) associated with each hazard. Complete an evaluation of each risk using a risk matrix/register and evaluate precautions likely to reduce consequences and /or likelihood of a recurrence. Further details are on the Unit Moodle site.

5. Measure and evaluate the patient safety culture in your clinical workplace using the Manchester Patient Safety Framework Evaluation Sheets. Work with a partner in your clinical workplace to complete this.

    Further details are on the Unit Moodle site.

    Submit the completed Manchester Patient Safety Framework Evaluation Sheets and produce a brief written discussion of your results.

Your final report will include

• cover page,

• contents page,

• data presented in figures, tables or diagrams,

• discussion of results, or further action, for some tasks

• short directive paragraphs and objective language

An introduction and conclusion is not required. Recommendations for improvement will relate to specific sections of the portfolio.

Please note:

•  Assessment length should be 2000 (+/-10%) words, excluding references (including in-text), diagrams, tables, graphics and completed quality improvement tools.

• Diagrams must be cited / referenced.

• The list of references should be contained at the end of the assessment.

• Vancouver referencing system.

Your assessment will be evaluated using the following Criteria

• Production of a complete, informative quality management portfolio.

• Informed rationale for choices made.

• Application of concepts to analysis of events, observations and data collected.

• Proposal of relevant, feasible plans for improvement.

• Explicit organisation in a logical way, including use of appropriate titles, headings and sub-headings.

• Relevancy and prioritisation of content.

• Application of concepts and correct use of terminology.

• Information supported by credible, up to date references correctly cited.

• Correct labeling of legible diagrams, tables and graphics appropriately cited.

• Correct use of terminology of quality practice.

• Critical analysis, and application of relevant theory to data collected.

• Accurate completion of quality improvement tools.

• Correct grammar and spelling.

• Adherence to the word limit.

• Use of footers with student/ assessment name & number and page number on each page.

• Legible font 12 pt.

• Marking rubric available on your unit Moodle site

Online Test

The test will be accessed through the tab on the Unit Moodle site and you will require internet access to complete this test.

TEST FORMAT : This online-test will be short answer questions

NUMBER of QUESTIONS.10 questions. Each Question will be worth 10 marks.

The questions will be drawn at random from a larger bank of equitable questions.

TIME LIMIT : The test will be open for 90 minutes which will allow you 9 minutes for each question. Only 1 attempt at the quiz is allowed and you cannot go back to a question.

Once the test is commenced it cannot be paused, stopped or re-started and once you have completed the test, it cannot be re-taken.

Students must attempt all questions.

The on-line test will be open for one week from Wednesday Week 12 (09:00) until Wednesday Review Exam week (09:00).

The on-line test must be completed within this time frame.

RETURN DATE: 2 weeks after online-test closes.

The questions for this on-line test will be drawn from a pool of questions to allow tests to be different for each student.

Image viewing tests may be included and questions will cover various imaging modalities.

You will need to allocate a 90 minute period of time during that week that the test is open where you have good internet connection to allow the test to be completed. Your answers need to be detailed enough to allow you to gain 10 marks for each answer you provide.

Please note. You must complete this test before Wedensday day the 16th October at 9.00am AEST as the test will automatically close at this time. If you have not completed the on-line test by this time, your test may be submitted with no answers.

It is your responsibility to ensure you have the test well and truly completed before Review Exam Week Wednesday at 9:00 AEST.

This test is be completed on-line and is an open book exam, however, there will limited time to look up answers. The test is time limited with only 9 minutes allowed for you to type in your answer to each question. You will find it useful to produce your own notes from the unit material to help you during the test as the time limit will not permit extensive searching through the unit material.

You need to obtain a minimum score of 50% in the on-line test to pass the unit.