Quality and Patient Safety in Pediatric Acute Care

Over the past several years, patient safety and quality of care have become a key priority for health systems. Despite increased awareness, collaborative efforts, and education, harm to patients is still common and has not shown a significant decline. Errors still affect as many as one-third of all hospitalized children. Utilizing best practices to eliminate preventable adverse events such as catheter-associated bloodstream infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia, pressure ulcers, and other serious safety events will result in significant cost savings and resource utilization, as well as improved care. This chapter discusses building trigger tools to identify errors in acutely ill children, proposes key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor processes and guide strategic planning. It describes few quality initiatives to standardize healthcare delivery, improve team collaboration, and enhance effective communication such as care bundles and safety checklists.