Using the integrated nurse leadership program to reduce sepsis mortality.

Background: The Integrated Nurse Leadership Program (INLP) is a collaborative improvement model focused on developing practical leadership skills of nurses and other frontline clinicians to lead quality improvement efforts. Sepsis is a major challenge to treat because it arises unpredictably and can progress rapidly. Nine San Francisco Bay Area hospitals participated in a 22-month INLP Sepsis Mortality Reduction Project to improve sepsis detection and management.

Spreading a medication administration intervention organizationwide in six hospitals.

Background: Six hospitals from the San Francisco Bay Area participated in a 12-month quality improvement project conducted by the Integrated Nurse Leadership Program (INLP). A quality improvement intervention that focused on improving medication administration accuracy was spread from two pilot units to all inpatient units in the hospitals.

Methods: INLP developed a 12-month curriculum, presented in a combination of off-site training sessions and hospital-based training and consultant-led meetings, to teach clinicians the key skills needed to drive organizationwide change.

Nurse-driven programs to improve patient outcomes: transforming care at the bedside, integrated nurse leadership program, and the clinical scene investigator academy.

As the national quality agenda continues to be a key driver in healthcare, more programs are being developed to teach staff nurses how to lead quality change projects. Nurses are in a unique position to do this work; however, they may lack project management and leadership skills to do so. The authors provide a content analysis that compares and contrasts 3 such programs.

Empowering frontline nurses: a structured intervention enables nurses to improve medication administration accuracy.

Background: Seven hospitals from the San Francisco Bay Area participated in an 18-month-long Integrated Nurse Leadership Program, which was designed to improve the reliability of medication administration by developing and deploying nurse leadership and process improvement skills on one medical/surgical inpatient unit.

Methods: Each hospital formed a nurse-led project team that worked on six safety processes to improve the accuracy of medication administration: Compare medication to the medication administration record, keep medication labeled from preparation to administration, check two forms of patient identification, explain drug to patient (if applicable), chart immediately after administration, and protect process from distractions and interruptions.

Results: For the six hospitals included in the analysis, the accuracy of medication administration (as measured by the percent of correct doses administered) improved from 85% in the baseline period to 92% six months after the intervention and 96% 18 months after the intervention.