Joint Commission Receives Grant to Study Pre-Operative Nursing Assessments

October 16, 2007 - The Joint Commission recently announced it has received a $198,000 grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) for a one-year study of the potential risks and weaknesses of inaccurate or incomplete pre-operative nursing assessments in ambulatory surgery centers.

The Joint Commission will collaborate on the project with United Surgical Partners International (USPI) and Battelle, Pacific Northwest Division, by conducting failure mode and effects analyses (FMEA) on pre-operative nursing assessments in 10 USPI freestanding ambulatory surgery centers accredited by The Joint Commission under its Ambulatory Health Care accreditation program.

The FMEA process, a prospective risk assessment technique to improve patient safety, will be used to examine the nursing assessment process both as it was designed to work and as it was actually implemented. By using FMEA, the study will identify where the pre-operative nursing assessment process, which was designed to promote patient safety, is most vulnerable.

For more information: www.jointcommission.org