Quality Improvement & Patient Safety Flashcards
7 cards from real CPE practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Quality Improvement & Patient Safety flashcards as text
When using a Pareto chart in QI, the primary goal is to:
Answer: Identify the 20% of causes responsible for 80% of problems
A Pareto chart visually prioritizes problem causes by frequency, leveraging the 80/20 principle to focus improvement efforts on high-impact factors.
A physician executive reviewing adverse event data notices a cluster of falls among patients on a specific unit during night shifts. Which tool best identifies contributing workflow factors?
Answer: Fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram
A fishbone diagram systematically categorizes potential contributing causes across domains such as people, process, environment, and equipment.
The National Quality Forum (NQF) 'Never Events' concept is MOST accurately described as:
Answer: Serious preventable adverse events that should never occur in healthcare
NQF Never Events are serious, largely preventable adverse events (e.g., wrong-site surgery, retained surgical items) that are unambiguous indicators of major safety system failures.
A physician executive wants to improve staff reporting of near-miss events. The MOST effective cultural intervention is:
Answer: Creating a blame-free, non-punitive reporting system with feedback loops
Blame-free reporting systems with visible follow-up increase event reporting rates, which is essential for learning from near-misses before harm occurs.
In the context of High Reliability Organizations (HROs), 'preoccupation with failure' means:
Answer: Actively seeking weak signals and near-misses to prevent errors before they cascade
HROs are preoccupied with failure by continuously monitoring for small deviations and weak signals that may indicate emerging systemic risk.
Which QI methodology is BEST suited for reducing waste and non-value-added steps in a patient discharge process?
Answer: Lean/Toyota Production System
Lean methodology focuses specifically on identifying and eliminating waste (muda) and non-value-added steps, making it ideal for streamlining discharge workflows.
A physician executive is evaluating a new hand hygiene monitoring system. Using Donabedian's model, hand hygiene compliance rate is classified as a:
Answer: Process measure
Hand hygiene compliance rate measures whether a recommended care process was performed, classifying it as a process measure in the Donabedian framework.