Using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality patient safety indicators for targeting nursing quality improvement.

Zrelak PA, Utter GH, Sadeghi B, Cuny J, Baron R, Romano PS.

Source

Center for Healthcare Policy and Research, University of California-Davis, UC Davis Medical Center, 2103 Stockton Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95817, USA. pazrelak@ucdavis.edu

Abstract

Quantifying the critical impact nurses have on the prevention and early recognition of potential complications and adverse events, such as those identified by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) patient safety indicators (PSI), is becoming increasingly important. In this paper, we describe how the AHRQ PSI may be used to identify nursing-specific opportunities to improve care based on data from the national AHRQ PSI validation pilot project.