As the US health care system begins to reengineer itself to address the need for quality improvement, it also is being actively reshaped by the expectations of consumers. The confluence of these forces requires a new approach to setting health care performance standards. The National Quality Forum (NQF) has been established as a private, not-for-profit, open membership, public benefit corporati...

BACKGROUND Increasing participation of registered nurses (RNs) in quality improvement (QI) is a promising strategy to close the health care quality chasm. For RNs to participate effectively in hospital QI, they must have adequate QI knowledge and skills. METHODS This descriptive study assessed employer-sponsored QI education and RNs' preparedness across a wide range of QI steps and processes....

AAPD: American Academy Pediatric Dentistry. CSHCN: Children with special health care needs. Purpose The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) recognizes that, because of improvements in medical care, the number of patients with special health care needs will continue to grow. Many of the formerly acute and fatal diagnoses have become chronic and manageable conditions. These patients re...

BACKGROUND Research capacity is a prerequisite for any health care institution intending to provide high-quality care, yet, few clinicians engage in research, and their work is rarely recognized. To make research an institutional activity, it could be helpful to measure health care professionals' research performance. However, a comprehensive approach to do this is lacking. METHODS We conduct...

The growing focus on providing high-quality care suggests that nurses' involvement in quality activities is likely to increase in coming years. By actively participating in the improvement of health care, nurses benefit their patients and stimulate joy in work.

Effective communication between patients, their families, their carers and health care professionals is paramount to the delivery of high quality care. Addressing the ideas, concerns and expectations of these groups may improve their healthcare experience. We propose that opening a new channel of communication between patients, families, carers and healthcare professionals on the wards would im...

The assessment of healthcare quality increasingly emphasises lay acceptability, as evidenced by the emergence of patient satisfaction and patient-centred care in the literature and in policy. In this paper we aim to provide a conceptual overview of acceptability and propose ways to enhance its assessment. Firstly, we map how acceptability's importance in quality assessments has increased and ho...

The freedom to consent to participate in medical research is a complex subject, particularly in socio-economically vulnerable communities, where numerous factors may limit the efficacy of the informed consent process. Informal consultation among members of the Switching the Poles Clinical Research Network coming from various sub-Saharan African countries, that is Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Rwand...

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) believes that pharmacists who practice in hospitals and health systems (“health-system pharmacists”) have a critical leadership role in national health care quality-improvement initiatives. Health-system pharmacists possess the knowledge of drug therapy and medication-use systems required to successfully implement quality-assurance and im...

Background The California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) established the Quality Initiative in 1998 to improve health care quality in California. Since then, the Quality Initiative has been a catalyst in stimulating consumer-driven improvement of health care quality by fostering the development and dissemination of salient and standardized quality-of-care measures; stimulating consumer and purcha...