The Patient's Contribution to Quality

In a new article in the New England Journal of Medicine, "The Missing Voice of Patients in Drug-Safety Reporting," Dr. Ethan Basche writes about the importance of including patients' experiences with drugs in the drug-labeling process for reporting adverse effects.  The current model assumes that physicians' reports alone adequately describe the experiences of patients.

INQRI agrees that the inclusion of patients' voices during the quality discussion is incredibly important.  In fact, two of our studies were specifically designed with that goal in mind.

In their project, "Quality of Pediatric Nursing Care from the Children's Perspective," Drs. Nancy Ryan-Wenger and William Gardner and their team identified hospitalized children's perceptions of the linkages between the quality of nursing care and outcomes. This study identified the nursing care processes and outcomes that matter most to children during their hospitalization, and estimated the extent to which disparities exist in the quality of their care and outcomes. Researchers found that parents and children reported different perceptions regarding the care the children received.  Click here to watch the YouTube videos of the team's presentation of findings.

Drs. Shoshanna Sofaer and Jean Johnson and their team developed nursing-sensitive quality measures that patients find important and useful.  In their project, "Developing and Testing Nursing Quality Measures with Consumers and Patients," they studied how recent patients responded to existing nursing quality measures and worked on new measures in care coordination.  Click here to download a presentation of the team's findings.