Root-Cause Analysis and Safety Improvement Planning
Patient safety is a matter of more than just reacting to incidents as they arise.
To foster a truly safe environment for patients in a facility, one must look for broader patterns in safety concerns and trace them back to their common root causes. And, after these root causes have been identified, careful planning must be undertaken to enact evidence-based strategies to mitigate these issues.
In this scenario, you will assume the role of the charge nurse of a care unit at Clarion Court Skilled Nursing Facility in Shakopee, MN, a part of the Vila Health network. Clarion Court has seen a steady rise in medication errors over the past six months, leading to a particularly serious medication error last week that nearly resulted in an overdose.
The administrator of the facility, Stephen Silva, has asked you to conduct a root cause analysis and assist with creating a safety improvement plan to address the increase of medication errors on the unit over the past several months. This is a very serious matter because patient safety is of the utmost concern and medication errors remain a top priority at health care settings. You are required to submit a root cause analysis and safety improvement plan based off the incidences reported surrounding medication errors. NURS FPX4020 Medical Errors in A Vila Health Root Cause Analysis
RE: Safety at Clarion Court
From: Stephen Silva, Administrator, Clarion Court Skilled Nursing Facility
To: Benny
I know that you’re upset about last week’s medication error. We all are. I think we need to look at this as a wake-up call, one we probably should have gotten months ago. We’ve seen the rate of medication errors move up steadily for months now, along with bad moves on several other health and safety metrics.
We need to take this seriously! On top of immediate measures to prevent the specifics of last week’s error from recurring, I would like you to do some examination of the deeper issues at play. Please spend some time talking to the care staff in your unit, and perform a root cause analysis. What are our underlying issues that are causing medication errors and other safety errors? On top of that analysis, I’d like you to at least start putting some thought into what sort of evidence-based courses of action we can undertake to remediate this.
Many thanks! I look forward to hearing what you find out.
best,
Stephen
Marisa Pacheco
CNA
I’ve been here 6 months. In some ways, it feels like 6 years; in others, it feels like I’m still learning the ropes. One thing I have trouble with: the computer system we use for charts. I always think I get it, and then I get twisted around, and oh boy. It can get pretty confusing. A couple of times I’ve just gotten completely lost trying to enter basic information, and I get really upset and scared. And then it takes me forever to get out of the mess, and I fall behind. And if I have to ask for help, whoever it is that helps me falls behind, too.
It’s a really hard job. You get pretty fried by the end of a shift, especially if they change what shift you’re working on. I can get to be kind of a zombie after a couple of hours on my feet here. I had an incident – I still feel super bad about this – where I was helping a resident in the bath and she slipped because my attention drifted. She broke her hip, and had a really tough bunch of months after that. I felt terrible. And it all happened because I was zonked. I don’t handle meds, but I can’t imagine what it must be like for people trying to keep medications straight when their brains are mush at the end of a shift and they’ve been fighting with the computers the whole time.
Shonda McCrae
RN
I’ve been here three years. This was my first job after nursing school. I like it a lot! I love the connection with the residents – I feel like I’m doing my part to make their lives better a little bit each day.
In terms of safety, here’s the thing – in school and on the job here, I think I’ve had really good safety training. I know how to do things in ways that are safe for the residents and for me. I know the safety plan. But – but! Sometimes that training and those procedures don’t seem like they’re really meant for the real world. You always want to do things the right way, but then going completely by the book can be really fussy and take a long time. And you’ve got a million things to do and they’re all important and supposed to happen right now, and residents have needs and they’re urgent and, well, you get the picture. It’s a tough thing to balance, always following procedure and keeping up with your obligations.
Good example: I know one of the things that the state mentioned in their audit was a staff member not wearing gloves when touching a patient. Well, that was me. I’m not proud of that at all. But I was in the middle of doing a blood glucose check and my damn glove tore. I should have run and gotten another, but I didn’t have time, I was already behind. So I just yanked it off my hand and kept going, then I looked up and saw the inspector.
Anyway. I guess that means a bigger nursing staff would make everything safer, right? Less stuff for each person to do, more time to do it 100% according to protocol?
Nora Church
RN
You want to talk about safety? Sure, I can talk about safety.
The biggest problem we have is some of the support staff cutting corners or just not really knowing their jobs. I know I’m not supposed to say this, but I have a real problem trusting the CNAs to follow procedures. CNAs or other support staff. They don’t care about patient safety, they don’t respect the safety plan – what there is of it – and they don’t want to take the time to learn the right way of doing things, so they take short cuts so they can get on to their breaks or what have you. I trust the other RNs to do their jobs the right way. The LPNs too, I guess, although a lot of them have been carrying around a lot of bad habits for a long time. But outside of the credentialed nurses? Forget it.
There’s this really bad perception out there that skilled nursing facility staff aren’t on the same level as hospital staff. Which makes me crazy! It’s right there in the name, skilled nursing. But then I think of our CNAs here and, well, I see where people are coming from. NURS FPX4020 Medical Errors in A Vila Health Root Cause Analysis
Rich Kim
CNA
You know something weird? I’ve been here for three years. That’s not long at all, really. But other CNAs come in and out of here so quickly that I feel like one of the old guard of Clarion Court. It’s a real problem!
It means that there are always a lot of people on the floor who are learning on the job. Even if they come in with very good job skills and experience, they still need time to familiarize themselves with Clarion Court itself. If you aren’t familiar with all of the residents, for instance, the older gentleman walking out the door with a firm look like he knows where he’s going may just appear to be a visitor on his way out when he is really a resident eloping. In fact, I think that’s happened here before.
Another thing that I think we need to do something about: nursing staff who walk around with their noses up in the air, thinking they’re too good to listen to CNAs when we’ve got something to say. I don’t care how fancy a nursing school you went to for your BSN, we’re all still people with eyes and brains, and we can all see stuff worth hearing about.
Lisa Cotrone
LPN
I’ve been here, what, 16 years. Wow! I spent a big chunk of time at Good Shepherd Home in St. Louis Park before that. It’s funny- I feel like I’m part of a dying breed. At least here, seems like all the incoming nurses are RNs, and a good chunk of them have a BSN.
Anyway. Safety. We get pulled into meetings, we get lectured about the safety plan, and, well, I don’t know. It’s good, yeah, but it’s words on paper. I’ve been here a long time! I know how to do things safely, no matter what some sheet of paper in a binder says.
One thing that happens to me again and again is that there’s this wall blocking communication. We do shift changeovers, and sometimes I have trouble following Fatima from the morning shift. Don’t get me wrong, she’s smart as heck! But she didn’t grow up speaking English, and her accent’s kind of thick. And sometimes the words she uses don’t make sense to me. And asking her to explain doesn’t always clear anything up. Couple of times, this has led to me not knowing something that’s up with a resident that I really should have known. We have charts, of course, and that helps, but charts only get you so far.
We get a lot of nurses and CNAs who either aren’t from the U.S. originally or are coming out of recent immigrant communities. I think there’s a couple of reasons for that. Partly because it’s a good entry-level job, and partly because in a lot of those cultures, it’s a definite thing that you should respect and take care of older people. And they see working here, or places like here, as a way to do that. And it’s great! But it means we have this language thing to deal with a lot.
Vila Health: Root-Cause Analysis and Safety Improvement Planning
My Questions
Question:
After talking to the floor staff, what do you see as some root causes of Clarion Court’s safety problems?
Question:
What would you recommend as part of a safety improvement plan?