Patient Safety and Quality


Book Description

"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/




Quality, Safety, and Environment


Book Description

For the first time, an author has demonstrated that safety and environment are influential factors within the quality arena. Pascal Dennis explains how applying quality management principles to safety and environmental issues can result in growth for an organization where safety and environment endeavors are concerned. This is the only book demonstrating that problems stemming from quality, safety and environment share the same root cause and respond to the identical remedies offered by a modern quality management system. Extremely well-written, Quality, Safety, and Environment: Synergy in the 21st Century includes chapters focusing on the histroy of the quality revolution, behavior-based safety, and the vital issues facing today's safety manager. The goals, methods, and principles of total safety and environmental management are introduced as well as statistical process control and other quality tools made applicable to safety and environmental situations. Benefits Increase profits by integrating your organization's management systems. Apply cutting-edge technologies in environmental management. Administer proven methods of measuring environmental performance. Contents: Introduction Entropy--The QSE link Generic Management Systems--A Primer Quality Management Systems Safety Management Systems Environmental Management Systems Q, S, and E Management Systems--Synergies Implications for Management Includes 32 illustrations




Health and Safety, Environment and Quality Audits


Book Description

This book provides a step-by-step guide to technical and operational integrity audits which has become invaluable for senior management and auditors alike. This book: Shows practitioners and students how to carry out internal audits to the key international health and safety, environment and quality standards Contains over 20 new case studies, 20 additional A-Factors, and superb new illustrations Includes checklists, forms and practical tips to make learning easier. With the addition of colour, Health and Safety Environment and Quality Audits delivers a powerful and proven approach to auditing business-critical risk areas. It covers each of the aspects that need to be taken into account for a successful risk-based audit to international or company standards and is an important resource for auditors and lead auditors, managers, HSEQ professionals, and others with a critical interest in governance, assurance and organizational improvement. The companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/asbury contains relevant articles, example risk management frameworks, and a video by the author explaining the key aspects of the book.




Crossing the Quality Chasm


Book Description

Second in a series of publications from the Institute of Medicine's Quality of Health Care in America project Today's health care providers have more research findings and more technology available to them than ever before. Yet recent reports have raised serious doubts about the quality of health care in America. Crossing the Quality Chasm makes an urgent call for fundamental change to close the quality gap. This book recommends a sweeping redesign of the American health care system and provides overarching principles for specific direction for policymakers, health care leaders, clinicians, regulators, purchasers, and others. In this comprehensive volume the committee offers: A set of performance expectations for the 21st century health care system. A set of 10 new rules to guide patient-clinician relationships. A suggested organizing framework to better align the incentives inherent in payment and accountability with improvements in quality. Key steps to promote evidence-based practice and strengthen clinical information systems. Analyzing health care organizations as complex systems, Crossing the Quality Chasm also documents the causes of the quality gap, identifies current practices that impede quality care, and explores how systems approaches can be used to implement change.




Guide to Environment Safety and Health Management


Book Description

Although an integral part of the corporate world, the development and execution of a successful Environmental Safety and Health (ES&H) program in today's profit-driven business climate is challenging and complex. Add to that the scarcity of resources available to assist managers in successfully designing and implementing these programs and you'




Integrated Management Systems for Construction


Book Description

Integrated management systems (IMS) are an innovative way of handling the plethora of management functions and procedures that are applied throughout major construction projects. Contracting companies use management systems to shape and define the corporate arrangement of their business activities, translating these into operational procedures for application to the construction projects they undertake. The management of quality, environment, and safety are at the forefront of systems evolution where the integration of these traditionally independent and dedicated standards-based and process-orientated systems can provide the potential to deliver greater organisational efficiency and effectiveness. This is the first textbook to cover each of the international standards for quality, safety and environment (ISO9000, ISO14001 and ISO18001) and to discuss integrating them. This book provides a detailed yet accessible text to support the study of quality, environment, and safety management systems on professionally accredited undergraduate courses throughout the built environment and for advanced postgraduate courses in construction, project, and engineering management. It is also an indispensible reference for construction professionals working for principal contractors, subcontractors and construction industry supply chain organisations.




Keeping Patients Safe


Book Description

Building on the revolutionary Institute of Medicine reports To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm, Keeping Patients Safe lays out guidelines for improving patient safety by changing nurses' working conditions and demands. Licensed nurses and unlicensed nursing assistants are critical participants in our national effort to protect patients from health care errors. The nature of the activities nurses typically perform â€" monitoring patients, educating home caretakers, performing treatments, and rescuing patients who are in crisis â€" provides an indispensable resource in detecting and remedying error-producing defects in the U.S. health care system. During the past two decades, substantial changes have been made in the organization and delivery of health care â€" and consequently in the job description and work environment of nurses. As patients are increasingly cared for as outpatients, nurses in hospitals and nursing homes deal with greater severity of illness. Problems in management practices, employee deployment, work and workspace design, and the basic safety culture of health care organizations place patients at further risk. This newest edition in the groundbreaking Institute of Medicine Quality Chasm series discusses the key aspects of the work environment for nurses and reviews the potential improvements in working conditions that are likely to have an impact on patient safety.




U.S. Health in International Perspective


Book Description

The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.




Office Buildings


Book Description

This book brings together concepts from the building, environmental, behavioural and health sciences to provide an interdisciplinary understanding of office and workplace design. Today, with changes in the world of work and the relentless surge in technology, offices have emerged as the repositories of organizational symbolism, denoted by the spatial design of offices, physical settings and the built environment (architecture, urban locale). Drawing on Euclidian geometry that quantifies space as the distance between two or more points, a body of knowledge on office buildings, the concept of office and office space, and the interrelationships of spatial and behavioural attributes in office design are elucidated. Building and office work-related illnesses, namely sick building syndrome and ailments arising from the indoor environment, and the menace of musculoskeletal disorders are the alarming manifestations that critically affect employee satisfaction, morale and work outcomes. With a focus on office ergonomics, the book brings the discussion on the fundamentals of work design, with emphasis on computer workstation users. Strategic guidance of lighting systems and visual performance in workplaces are directed for better application of ergonomics and improvement in office indoor environment. It discusses the profiles of bioclimatic, indoor air quality, ventilation intervention, lighting and acoustic characteristics in office buildings. Emphasis has been given to the energy performance of buildings, and contemporary perspectives of building sustainability, such as green office building assessment schemes, and national and international building-related standards and codes. Intended for students and professionals from ergonomics, architecture, interior design, as well as construction engineers, health care professionals, and office planners, the book brings a unified overview of the health, safety and environment issues associated with the design of office buildings.




Safety Performance in a Lean Environment


Book Description

As changing customer demands and shifting world markets continue to put a strain on businesses in all sectors, your business needs every advantage to stay competitive. Many people may think of Lean processes as suitable only for the manufacturing floor, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Safety Performance in a Lean Environment: A Guide to Building Safety into a Process demonstrates how Lean tools can eliminate waste in your safety program, making it an important piece not only in keeping your organization safe but also in keeping it globally competitive. Written by safety pro Paul F. English, this book explores tools such as Lean manufacturing, DMAIC processes, and Kepner-Trego problem solving and how to use them to increase efficiency and eliminate waste in safety programs. He goes on to discuss value-based management, a technique identified as a leading business model for any organization wanting to catch "The Toyota Way." These processes help you build, incorporate, and sustain a safety program and understand how to get and maintain a foothold for the safety program in times of change. Here’s what you get: Real safety solutions for a Lean environment Methods for setting up standard work for EHS professionals How-tos for JSA and pre-task analysis to help develop standardized work Tips and tricks that everyone can use to jump start a stalled safety program No book currently on the market discusses Lean manufacturing or Six Sigma processes and links them to the occupational safety or environmental science. Yet these are the areas where the need for Lean processes is becoming acute. English demonstrates how to anticipate paradigm shifts in management models and how environmental health and safety fits into the model. He defines what adds value to the safety and manufacturing process as well as to the customer. These changes may include a change in daily, weekly or monthly metrics that can help or harm a safety program. Defining what adds value to the safety and manufacturing process and the customer helps you understand how to build safety into a process, creating a strong safety program.