Quality Improvement Project for Gastro-Oesophageal Reflux in Babies

Principles of a QI Project

You have recently started working in a paediatric emergency department and notice there are a lot of babies presenting with feeding difficulties and being given a diagnosis of gastro-oesophageal reflux. You ask one of the Consultants what the recommended practice is and discover there is no consistent approach and no departmental guideline.

He suggests you do an audit of current practice and this shows wide variance in practice across the team in the department in terms of diagnosis of the condition, management (including use of medications), follow up practices and advice given to parents.

You do this and present your findings at a local clinical meeting. It is well received and the management team suggest that a Quality Improvement (QI) project would be a good way to take this forward and nominate you to take this on.

This exercise asks you to provide an overview of a QI project and how you will develop the desired improvement in clinical care for this problem. To help you we suggest you answer the questions on the accompanying proforma (see adjacent file in this folder).

We have included some papers in the resource list which should help you with this task. However, you will need to expand the reading further for evidence and supporting documentation.

We appreciate this is a difficult task which will continue over the mid-term break, with a submission date as last day of term – please see the timetable for the last day of term when all exercises need to be submitted.

Please read the description of the task in the accompanying document. When you have done this spend some time thinking about the exercise bearing in mind the questions below, You may find a mindmap may help with the process.

 

Once you are ready please provide answers to the questions below – most will require some detail ie more than a one line response, so do add detail as required, as well as supporting evidence where relevant.

 

When this document is complete please submit to the correct area. Then set about creating an appropriate PowerPoint presentation – see last item below.

 

This whole exercise mimics how a QI project might be undertaken and presented to colleagues.

 

You have up to six weeks to complete this with a submission date of last day of term.

 

1. What are the principles of a QI project? 

 

2. How does it compare with clinical audit, research projects and service evaluation and transformation. You might add a table here but any format that demonstrates your answer is fine eg.

 

You can amend as you wish eg add rows and criteria as you wish.

 

3. Please set out the steps you would take in designing and carrying out this QI project

 

a. What might be your gold standard of practice?

 

b. How would you determine this gold standard of practice? 

 

c. What changes would you put in place?

 

d. How would you measure whether any change had been achieved?

 

e. Create a PDSA cycle template for your project (see document in Resource list area for further details)

 

4. Create a brief PowerPoint presentation (max 5 slides) to present back to your ED colleagues explaining the project before you get started – note separate submission area.