Hospital Nurses and Frontline Staff at the Forefront of Quality Improvement

AF4Q’s Transforming Care at the Bedside is making a difference across the country by empowering nurses to make real change.

From The American Journal of Nursing: Several years ago Bonnie Glica, MS, RN, senior vice president of nursing at Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, New York, began to understand why nurses at her facility weren't at the center of quality improvement efforts in areas such as pressure-ulcer reduction: they were waiting to be told what to do.

"Some staff would wait to take direction from nursing administration," she said recently, "rather than ask each other, 'What are we seeing today, and what can we do to make it better?'" …

“We go in with the training, create the agenda, bring the materials, said [Catherine] West. “We want to build infrastructure so that when Aligning Forces goes away they don’t just stop.” Catherine West, MS, RN is the quality improvement leader for Transforming Care at the Bedside at the AF4Q National Program Office.

For more information: http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov