Patient safety, quality and risk management in healthcare

Nurses Career Support

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I am curious if anyone has experience in this area of healthcare as a nurse. I've been looking into getting a masters degree at some point and stumbled upon this concentration. While it is not a masters in nursing (those are few and far between with this concentration) it is accessible to nurses with their bachelors.

Anyhow, I was wondering of anyone could shed a light on what this area of healthcare entails from a day to day standpoint (obviously statistical analysis of patient safety and quality measures with counter implementation of amending plans is part of it). I would simply like input into what the job outlook is and if anyone actually works in this area/knows someone that works in this area and could illuminate it for me a little more outside of the vague overview of "quality and safety control".

Thanks!

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I'm not a nurse, i'm in social work, I just had happen to read these board because I am interested in become one. I just wanted to comment because I do a similar job...I deal with quality improvement and risk management in hospitals (I work in a team with nurses). I wish I was able to focus on prevention or statistics or anything of that nature, unfortunately I basically respond to complaints all the time, many of which are not valid but we have to listen to them anyway, and write a ton of reports about them so it's all official that we have responded and reviewed each matter. Also when i sometimes do find something wrong that needs improvement, i may not be allowed to speak about it because it could make the hospital look bad...hopefully other people have more positive experienes in the area.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

This is a very hot career field... It is only a matter of time before there are MSN programs with this focus. I have a colleague who is completing her MS in "Patient Safety Leadership" at the University of Illinois. It is a rigorous program - mostly online. There are many others around the country.

US Healthcare is in the midst of a dramatic change -- from traditional "quality" to data-driven outcomes improvement & overall performance effectiveness using multiple methodologies. The skills/knowledge required to do lead this effort are in pretty short supply right now.

BTW, any and all "quality improvement" data and work is automatically protected (non-discoverable) under current US laws. So the PP's fear that an organization will not act because it could make them "look bad" is groundless - as long as s/he follows accepted procedures & not calling local newspapers or putting information on the web - LOL.

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FYI I'm not in the US

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