QSEN – The Movement Embracing a Quality and Safety Culture
In September, our Langston Center for Quality, Safety and Innovation hosted a symposium, “QSEN – The Movement: Embracing the Quality and Safety Cultures in Academic and Service Environments” featuring, Gerry Altmiller, Ed.D., APRN, ACNBC, associate professor, The College of New Jersey and clinical nurse specialist consultant, Einstein Healthcare Network. It was amazing!
Dr. Altmiller was kind enough to provide her slides so that we could post links to the multitude of resources for teaching that she noted in her presentation.
First, she referenced an article in the journal Nurse Leader by Giancarlo Lyle-Edrosolo, “Aligning Healthcare Safety and Quality Competencies: Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN), the Joint Commission, and American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) Magnet Standards Crosswalk.” Table 1, in this article, shows the crosswalk between QSEN Standards, The Joint Commission Standards and the Magnet Standards. The complete reference is listed below. It is the author’s hope that with the crosswalk, nurse managers may choose to hire new graduate nurses educated at institutions that focus on the QSEN competencies.
Lyle-Edrosolo, G., & Waxman, K. (2016). Aligning Healthcare Safety and Quality Competencies: Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN), The Joint Commission, and American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) Magnet® Standards Crosswalk. Nurse Leader, 14(1), 70–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.MNL.2015.08.005
Dr. Altmiller listed the quality and safety competencies and resources for teaching for each competency.
- Patient Centered Care
- Teamwork and Collaboration
- Evidence Based Practice
- Quality Improvement
- Safety
- Informatics
Patient Centered Care
A great resource for teaching patient centered care is the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. On their website [http://www.ihi.org] there is a Person and Family Centered Care focus area with a number of courses specific to this area.
Students can earn a Basic Certificate in Quality and Safety if they complete all 13 IHI essential courses and scoring 75% or higher on the post-lesson assessment.
Dr. Altmiller described an article, “Medication Reconciliation,” that she wrote for Nurse Educator in the May 2018 issue. The article references a medication reconciliation checklist that she uses with her students during clinical. She also discusses the idea of using an unfolding case study that is centered around medication reconciliation.
The QSEN site has a number of unfolding case studies on a variety of topics. Go to the site and search for “unfolding case.”
Teamwork and Collaboration
For effective teamwork and collaboration to take place, effective interdisciplinary collaboration must be present. Dr. Altmiller teaches her students about SBAR for effective standardized communication.
Dr. Altmiller also posted a teaching strategy on the QSEN website regarding Teamwork and Collaboration: Teaching Strategies to Manage Challenging Communications. This resource describes the QSEN competencies, the learner level, the learning objectives and provides supplemental resources to use with the students.
Other resources are:
Evidence Based Practice
Dr. Altmiller works with her students to explain that evidence based practice is a way to reduce treatment variability through evidence. If at the same unit 3 different nurses are doing something in different ways, what does the evidence say about that particular technique?
Quality Improvement, Safety and Informatics
She noted that quality improvement should be the culture. She uses the Quality Improvement Essentials Toolkit from IHI with her students.
When searching for Dr. Altmiller’s grading rubric, I came across this video from Dr. Altmiller: Content Validation of a QSEN Based Clinical Evaluation Instrument. The video is available from Nurse Educator Online via the above link.
Dr. Altmiller also distributed a newsletter once a semester with content that was created by her students.
For the safety competency, IHI Open School has Patient Safety courses that provide 8.25 contact hrs.
Other resources available to professors teaching with the QSEN competencies:
- Virginia Henderson Global e-Repository
- The College of New Jersey video library
- QSEN faculty resources
- Nurse Educator QSEN Supplement
What a fantastic presentation! If you ever have an opportunity to hear Dr. Altmiller speak, she is fabulous!
Categories Teaching Tips