Key Dates
Start date: May 2003
Expected date of publication: July 2004
Key Contacts
Project Manager: Ian A Rodger, Ian.Rodger@nhshealthquality.org
Project Co-Ordinator: Michelle Richmond, Michelle.Richmond@nhshealthquality.org
Project Chair: Paul Wilson, Director of Nursing NHS Lanarkshire
Aims and Objectives
Aim:
The project's aim is to address one of the recommendations made by Audit Scotland in their 'Planning Ward Nursing - Legacy or Design' performance audit, specifically that NHSScotland need to do more in developing clinical quality indicators for Nursing which can demonstrate an improvement in the quality of care delivered as opposed to purely numbers of adverse incidents.
Whilst one aim of the project is to meet the recommendation by Audit Scotland, the development of Clinical Quality Indicators for Nursing should serve the more specific and practical purpose of providing information that can support the nursing profession demonstrate and improve the quality of care provided for patients.
Objectives:
To define develop and pilot Clinical Quality Indicators (CQI) for Nursing for use across NHSScotland
Project History
In December 2002, Audit Scotland published the results of a performance audit on behalf of the Auditor General, entitled Planning ward nursing - legacy or design. The audit acknowledged that measuring quality of nursing care is difficult, not least of all because the majority of care delivered by nursing staff is done in conjunction with other members of the health care team. The audit recommended that given the intrinsic risk to patients of poor quality of care and the variation in the proxy measures of quality:
- NHSScotland needs to develop and agree quality of care measures that focus on continuous improvement and measure these consistently
- NHS boards should ensure that trusts review quality indicators and take action where problems arise
- More work is needed on developing and agreeing standards which demonstrate that quality of care is being provided, rather than merely indicating the number of reported adverse incidents
Funding from the Scottish Health Quality forum obtained via the Scottish Executive Health Department (SEHD) allowed the commissioning of the project with additional funding provided by NHS QIS with the project based within NHS QIS Glasgow.
Public involvement is central to many aspects of this project where patient's views on nursing care in hospitals were collected through a series of focus groups conducted across Scotland. Two of the pilot indicators required a questionnaire to be sent to over 4000 patients asking about the patient's experience of various aspects of care in Hospital.
To date, 6 indicators were selected for piloting over a total of 5 health boards with the final report due to be published in the Summer of 2005.