CRE Quality Assurance & Improvement 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which statistical tool is most appropriate for tracking the number of defects per patient education session over time?
- Pareto chart
- c-chart (Correct answer)
- Scatter diagram
- Histogram
Correct answer: c-chart
A c-chart (count chart) is used to monitor the number of defects or nonconformities in a constant-size sample over time.
Question 2: In a respiratory therapy department's QI initiative, the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle's 'Study' phase primarily involves:
- Implementing the change on a larger scale
- Analyzing data collected during the trial run (Correct answer)
- Identifying the problem to be solved
- Standardizing the successful intervention
Correct answer: Analyzing data collected during the trial run
The Study phase involves analyzing the results of the small-scale test to determine whether the change produced the desired improvement.
Question 3: A respiratory educator notices that inhaler technique errors cluster around a specific step. Which QI tool best visualizes the frequency of different error types in rank order?
- Run chart
- Pareto chart (Correct answer)
- Fishbone diagram
- Control chart
Correct answer: Pareto chart
A Pareto chart ranks categories by frequency, helping identify the 'vital few' causes responsible for the majority of errors.
Question 4: Which measure of central tendency is MOST resistant to extreme outlier values when evaluating patient satisfaction scores?
- Mean
- Mode
- Median (Correct answer)
- Range
Correct answer: Median
The median is resistant to outliers because it represents the middle value of a dataset regardless of extreme scores.
Question 5: When a respiratory education program reviews sentinel events, the primary goal is to:
- Assign blame to the responsible staff member
- Identify systemic factors that contributed to the event (Correct answer)
- Document the event for legal protection
- Suspend care until the investigation is complete
Correct answer: Identify systemic factors that contributed to the event
Sentinel event reviews use root cause analysis to identify system-level factors so that similar events can be prevented in the future.
Question 6: A hospital implements a new asthma action plan protocol. Six months later, ER revisit rates drop. This is an example of measuring which type of quality indicator?
- Structure indicator
- Process indicator
- Outcome indicator (Correct answer)
- Balancing indicator
Correct answer: Outcome indicator
Outcome indicators measure the end result of care delivery, such as changes in patient health status or utilization rates.
Question 7: In the context of respiratory education QI, 'benchmarking' refers to:
- Setting arbitrary performance targets internally
- Comparing performance against best-practice standards or top-performing peers (Correct answer)
- Measuring only the worst-performing staff members
- Creating a new standard from scratch without external data
Correct answer: Comparing performance against best-practice standards or top-performing peers
Benchmarking involves comparing an organization's performance metrics against recognized leaders or best-practice standards to identify improvement gaps.
CRE Quality Assurance & Improvement 2
Which statistical tool is most appropriate for tracking the number of defects per patient education session over time?