Quality improvement

Background: Quality measures have highlighted the need for efficient treatment of status epilepticus. One strategy is prevention of refractory status epilepticus through individualized seizure action plans. As a quality improvement project, we implemented a standardized seizure action plan to improve the delivery of key information to families of children with seizures.

To incorporate the perspectives and experiences of family caregivers of children with obesity, the KidFit Health and Wellness Clinic, a paediatric weight management programme, embedded feedback opportunities into various stages of programme development. Caregivers were eligible to participate if their children had completed initial 4-week group-based pilot programming or were currently receiving treatment in 10 or 12 week group-based programming. Data were collected through feedback session discussions, audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically.

Background: Hospitals are increasingly motivated to improve the patient and family experience and increase patient satisfaction scores. The manner by which a provider greets patients and their families sets the tone for the hospital stay. This study aimed to improve residents' greetings of caregivers in the inpatient pediatric setting to improve family-centered communication. Methods: The study was conducted from October 2017 to April 2018 at a single, urban children's hospital on a unit with patients primarily, 5 years old.

This article describes the application of quality improvement (QI) to solve a long-standing, ongoing problem where service users or their carers felt they were not given enough information regarding diagnosis and medication during clinic assessments in a community mental health setting. Service users and carers had shared feedback that some of the information documented on clinic letters was not accurate and the service users were not given the opportunity to discuss these letters with the clinician.

Objective: The road to legalization of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) across Canada has largely focused on legislative details such as eligibility and establishment of regulatory clinical practice standards. Details on how to implement high-quality, person-centered MAID programs at the institutional level are lacking.

Background: Dementia care is predominantly provided by carers in home settings. We aimed to identify the priorities for homecare safety of people with dementia according to dementia health and social care professionals using a novel priority-setting method.; Methods: The project steering group determined the scope, the context and the criteria for prioritization. We then invited 185 North-West London clinicians via an open-ended questionnaire to identify three main problems and solutions relating to homecare safety of people with dementia.

Over the last two years we have been working together to take forward the National Carers' Strategy, published in 2008, in the context of more personalised support and sustained independence for carers and service users. This paper is the third in a sequence of short reviews designed to stimulate debate and improve the support for carers. At a time when we face many challenges around resources it is doubly important that we keep our sights firmly on the improved outcomes that can be secured through early intervention and preventative support. The review contains five key messages.

We have been working together to take forward The National Carers’ Strategy, published in 2008 alongside the promotion of more personalised support and sustained independence. This paper is the fourth in a sequence of short reviews designed to stimulate debate and improve support for carers. It links closely to Commissioning for Carers [2009]. The focus of this paper is to help us all to tackle the following question: How will you, carers, and people more generally know if you have improved outcomes for people who give and receive care and support? It is a question not easily answered.

Researcher Elinor Nicholas describes how support for carers could be improved even where resources are limited.