International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance: Volume 27 Issue 4

Making quality improvement programs more effective

Yoku Shaw-Taylor

In the past 25 years, and as recent as 2011, all external evaluations of the Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) Program have found its impact to be small or difficult to…

Moving to patient reported collection of race and ethnicity data: Implementation and impact in ten hospitals

Carolyn Berry, Sue A. Kaplan, Tod Mijanovich, Andrea Mayer

The purpose of this paper is to examine the feasibility of collecting standardized, patient reported race and ethnicity (RE) data in hospitals, and to assess the impact on data…

Why is your patient sedated?

Olwen Murphy, Graham King, Ian Callanan, Marcus W. Butler

– The purpose of this paper is to examine the recording of clinical indication for prescribed sedative/hypnotic (SH) medications in a large, acute tertiary referral hospital.

Quality of care and health professional burnout: narrative literature review

Niamh Humphries, Karen Morgan, Mary Catherine Conry, Yvonne McGowan, Anthony Montgomery, Hannah McGee

Quality of care and health professional burnout are important issues in their own right, however, relatively few studies have examined both. The purpose of this paper is to…

Diabetic retinopathy care – an international quality comparison

Carolina Elisabeth de Korte, Dirk F. de Korne, Jose P. Martinez Ciriano, J. Robert Rosenthal, Kees Sol, Niek S. Klazinga, Roland A. Bal

The purpose of this paper is to study the quality indicator appropriateness and use it for international quality comparison on diabetic retinopathy (DR) patient care process in…

Why TQM does not work in Iranian healthcare organisations

Ali Mohammad Mosadeghrad

Despite the potential benefits of total quality management (TQM), many healthcare organisations encountered difficulties in its implementation. The purpose of this paper is to…

Improving process quality for pediatric emergency department

Byungjoon B.J. Kim, Theodore R. Delbridge, Dawn B. Kendrick

Overcrowding in emergency departments (EDs) leads to longer waiting times and results in higher number of patients leaving the ED without being seen by a physician. EDs need to…

Evaluation of the use of a nurse-administered telephone questionnaire for post-operative cataract surgery review

Petrina Tan, Fong Yee Foo, Stephen C. Teoh, Hon Tym Wong

The purpose of this paper is to determine the safety of substituting the first day post-operative review after routine cataract surgery (phacoemulsification) with a telephone…

QA-ing QA

Keith Hurst