Quality Improvement Tips for Children's Hospitals

Quality medical care is important at every level, but it is perhaps especially poignant in pediatrics. There are few things more stressful to a parent than having a child with a serious injury or illness. Many parents would do anything to cure their child, and they usually hold hospitals to the same lofty standard. While pediatric care is rarely perfect, there are many improvements hospitals can make.

Care and Discharge Times

A major area of improvement is decreasing wait time for both care and discharge. The problems with waiting for care are obvious to most patients. Medical problems can worsen if not treated promptly, and busy waiting rooms act as giant centers for infection between already sick and weak patients.
Less obvious is the giant bottleneck for patient discharge. Many children and parents are left waiting for discharge long after they have met obvious discharge goals. This is often the result of poor management, long rounds and physicians being overburdened. Many hospitals are now successfully allowing nurses to determine if discharge goals have been met to decrease wait time after treatment. This decreases costs and stress for everyone and frees up needed space for the next patient.

Improving Patient Communication

In a busy hospital environment, it can become easy to lose connection with a patient and concerned family members. Rushed nurses may not fully answer questions and give only brief explanations for what they are doing or why. Especially when children are involved, this becomes a major source of stress for parents who may be confused about their child's condition or treatment. This stress often flows over to the child.
Improving communication to parents helps the entire family feel at ease. It allows the parent to properly comfort the child and ease their worries about whatever is happening. Reducing this stress often makes a major impact on the child's recovery.

Family Centered Care

Children's hospitals arguably have a greater responsibility to family than other care centers. Often, doctors and nurses cannot work directly with the patient or communicate with them. They must work through adult caregivers and include them as a critical part of the team. This means making the entire treatment and recovery process family-centered. Simple steps like providing private rooms or allowing parents to sleep comfortably close to the child during longer stays can make a big difference.

Improvements to Technology and Efficiency

Medical technology and equipment has come a long way in recent years. By using the most innovative procedures and tools, doctors can improve the safety and recovery of patients. They may wish to learn about the PDMA for insight on the latest innovations. Parents demand the best for their children, and children's hospitals have a duty to provide that care. Having access to and knowledge of the most innovative tools is an important step.

A children's hospital has the important goal of safeguarding the health of the most vulnerable and precious portion of the population. This makes their quality of care even more important. Improvements in quality are paramount to safeguarding the lives of children and reducing the stress and impact of sickness and injury on families. As long as HCPs are verified through a service like MedPro Systems, families are focused on, and communication is of primary importance, your hospital will be a welcome refuge for the sick.