FACULTY
DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Training Manual
for Interdisciplinary Session Facilitators
Basic Approaches
to Quality Improvement
Taken from
Stanhope & Lancaster, 2004
Imogene Foster
General
approaches – involves a
large governing or official body’s evaluation of a person’s or an agency’s
ability to meet criteria or standards
Credentialing – the
formal recognition of a person as a professional with technical competence, or
of an agency that has met minimum standards of performance
Licensure – One of
the oldest quality assurance approaches; individual licensure is a contract
between the profession and the state.
Under this contract, the profession is granted control over entry into,
and exit from, the profession and over quality of professional practice.
Accreditation – A voluntary
approach to quality control used for institutions
Certification –
Educational achievements, experience, and performance on an examination
determine a person’s qualifications for functioning in an identifies specialty
area.
Recognition – One
agency accepts the credentialing status of and the credentials conferred by
another.
Academic degrees –
Titles awarded to individuals recognized by degree-granting institutions as
having completed a predetermined plan of study in a branch of learning.
Specific
approaches: Total quality management/continuous quality
improvement –
A management
philosophy that incorporates many tools, including quality assurance, to
increase customer satisfaction with quality care. Within this philosophical approach, quality care has four
components:
1) Professional performance
2) Efficient
use of resources
3) Minimal
risk to the client of illness or injury associated with care
4)
Client satisfaction
Stanhope, M. &
Lancaster, J. (2004). Community and public health nursing. Mosby: St. Louis, pp. 521-523.
Imogene FosterEdD, RN,
LPC,
Associate Professor and Coordinator of Rural Health Nursing Education
West Virginia University
School of Nursing
ifoster@hsc.wvu.edu