Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria, HSDF Drive Quality Improvement & Patient Safety in Nigeria
Evidence have shown numerous benefits of Patient-Familty Centered Care (PFCC) for all parties involved (hospital management, healthcare providers, patients and family). The benefits included improved quality of care, increased patient outcomes and patient safety, as well as increased patient satisfaction. Implementing PFCC at the facilities starts with every individual and can become a culture if the concept is imbibed as part of the day-to-day activities in the hospital facilities
Lagos,Nigeria, March 23, 2016 (Newswire.com) - Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria, HSDF drive quality improvement & patient safety
The quality of healthcare services and patient safety in Nigeria, Africa’s economic powerhouse, has continued to attract public discourse largely due to the occurrence of high-profile sentinel events reported in national media on a periodic basis.
"Quality care is about delivering the right kind of care to the right patient at the right time with patient safety remaining an integral part of quality. Patient safety helps to put preventive measure in place, improve outcomes and use data for decision making. A theoretical framework for safety to achieve quality care includes improvement and measurement (incident reporting, process map, Plan-Do-Study and Act cycle), reliable process (ensuring design and test guidelines are in place, avoiding reliance on memory, standardizing processes), teamwork and continuous learning
Dr. Zel Maikori, Quality Improvement Team Lead,Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria
For example, in 2011, a woman who had been booked for an elective caesarian section, fell off the operating theatre table, sustaining blunt head injury. A few days later, the woman died. She died in a tertiary health facility. Access was not the issue. Quality was the issue, and the system collectively failed her in that regards.
The impact of these challenges has been a widespread erosion of confidence by patients in the quality of domestic health care, resulting in an increase in self-medication and a significant increase in outbound medical tourism, which is now estimated at about one billion dollars in healthcare expenditure abroad.
Given these worrisome trends, empowering front-line health providers in private and public sector to improve the quality of health care in facilities, patient safety, clinical outcomes, and client satisfaction became the focal point at the recently concluded Quality Improvement Learning Sessions for 40 hospital facilities across the three senatorial zones in Lagos, Nigeria.
An initiative of Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria (PHN) and Health Strategy and Delivery Foundation (HSDF), the learning sessions provided an avenue to engage frontline health-care providers in prototype quality improvement collaborative networks using evidence based quality improvement (QI) and quality assurance (QA) approaches to improve facility-based health outcomes and enhance Patient-Family Centered Care (PFCC).
Quality Improvement Team Lead, PHN, Dr. Zel. Makori revealed that the Learning Sessions afforded multidisciplinary teams from participating hospitals shared learning from experts on best clinical practice, improvement methodologies, and evidence for improvement in hospital facilities.
With focus on maternal, neonatal health and Patient-Family Centered Care, Dr. Zel highlighted the need to develop a change package of evidenced based ideas, determine ways to implement plans, and evaluate small changes with quick feedback mechanisms, set measureable targets and collect relevant data and implementation between learning sessions with the overall aim of aim of improving health outcomes, a feat that would impact positively on the health care system.
“Quality care is about delivering the right kind of care to the right patient at the right time with patient safety remaining an integral part of quality. Patient safety helps to put preventive measure in place, improve outcomes and use data for decision making. A theoretical framework for safety to achieve quality care includes improvement and measurement (incident reporting, process map, Plan-Do-Study and Act cycle), reliable process (ensuring design and test guidelines are in place, avoiding reliance on memory, standardizing processes), teamwork and continuous learning” she stated.
While patient and community engagement and empowerment are key in the health care system, Dr. Zel revealed that Patient and Family-Centered Care (PFCC) is a change in thinking and approach to the planning, delivery and evaluation of healthcare that is grounded in mutually- beneficial partnerships among patients, families and the health care practitioners.
Dr. Zel pointed out that there is an increased demand from patients to be treated with dignity and respect hence healthcare is incomplete without emotional, development and social support.
According to Zel “Evidence have shown numerous benefits of PFCC for all parties involved (hospital management, healthcare providers, patients and family). The benefits included improved quality of care, increased patient outcomes and patient safety, as well as increased patient satisfaction. Implementing PFCC at the facilities starts with every individual and can become a culture if the concept is imbibed as part of the day-to-day activities in the hospital facilities.”
The event witnessed a marketplace presentation of change ideas and quality improvement processes been implemented by the various hospitals in attendance with the aim of improving facility-based health outcomes.