Read statement below and respond substantively to your peers. Comment on the strategies identified by your peers. If you can offer help or provide insight into additional tracer methods, use this opportunity to do so.
Tracer methodology is used to identify performance, providing an analysis of quality care (Siewert, 2018). The tracer method is used by the Joint Commission through on-site surveyors that follow patient care, services, and treatment processes to ensure quality (The Joint Commission, 2018). There are three types of tracers. Individual tracers follow specific patients throughout their care. They are chosen for their diagnosis, age, or services that are provided to them so as to evaluate practice within the organization.
Program-specific tracers are used to assess continuity of care and patient flow. System tracers follow a process or procedure that occurs within an organization. Some examples would be to analyze data management, infection control, medication management, and incident or error reporting (Seiwer, 2018). My quality improvement initiative, to prevent CAUTIs within a hospital, would benefit from using the individual tracer method to follow patients whose care requires them to have catheterization.
It would also benefit from the system tracer method to follow the process and procedure of catheterization within the facility.
Tracer methods can be integrated into a healthcare facility to provide data for and to be used to evaluate the effectiveness of quality improvement initiatives
Instead of a Joint Commission on-site surveyor, someone or multiple people in the project can be appointed with a similar surveyor position to view, audit, or collect data based on appropriateness for the project. The role of nurses in the tracer method would be to implement and act on the changes that are to be made for the quality improvement initiative.
Nurses or nurse managers could be appointed as the surveyors. Per the Joint Commission, tracers are typically completed in a interprofessional meeting where all data is analyzed for effectiveness and quality (The Joint Commission, 2018).
A similar meeting across disciplines can be held to determine the effectiveness of the project. If it determined that adjustments need to be made to the initiative process, the tracer method can be repeated again,
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