In order to fulfill the requirements for Module 7: Quality Management I

completed 4 tasks. First, I needed to participate in various committee meetings. I

was able to complete this primarily during the Long-Term Care portion of my
clinical rotation. I found in LTC, there were an abundance of opportunities for me to
attend meetings as they are held just about every day. Among the meetings I
attended, the most notable include: Care Conferences, Discharge Planning, Nutrition
Care Plan, Weight/Wound Meeting, Rehab Meetings, ICU rounds and Nutrition
Department Staff Meetings. Each of these meetings are interdisciplinary which
means there is a representative from each department such as physical therapy,
occupational therapy, social work, physician, nursing, nutrition and case
management. These experiences provided any and all information needed to care
for a patient in addition to each disciplines input and perspectives on the patients
needs and care. Furthermore, during Care Conferences the patients families were
present as well and the team of professionals were able to answer any and all of
their questions regarding the care of their loved one. I consider the Care
Conferences to be the most beneficial and important meeting to have in order to
continue care either at the LTC facility or as the patient returns home.
Next, during my time at my acute care rotation, I participated in a PI/QM
study per request of the clinical manager. The purpose of the study conducted was
to see if patients with diabetes owned a Glucometer at home, knew how to use it and
how to interpret their results. For 3 weeks I surveyed patients throughout the
hospital, recorded their results and reported back to the manager to discuss what I
was finding. We found that a majority of patients diagnosed with diabetes did own a
Glucometer, knew how to use the tool to check their blood sugar and were also able
to interpret their results. However, these individuals often times only checked their
blood sugar during times leading up to an appointment with their doctor, would
check very regularly initially after their diagnosis or hospital admission or would
simply not check at all because they were not motivated or unable to grasp the
importance. In addition, most patients who seemed most knowledgeable on their
condition were also able to report back their Hemoglobin A1c value. Lastly, with this
information I had recorded in an excel document I created both pie charts and
graphs to display the data I collected. See above in this module for a visual
representation of my findings!