• Project Profiles
  • NICU Feeding Practices
  • Approaches to Public Health Nursing
  • HKN Gap Analysis
  • Evidence Literacy Project
  • Assessing Patient Complexity
  • Early Identification of Autism
  • Measuring Quality Care
  • Young Adults in Long-Term Care
  • Reducing Medication Errors
  • Making Exercise Sticky
  • Stroke Guidelines
  • Driving Change in Mental Health
  • Help for New Mothers
  • Mentoring Makes a Difference
  • Pay-for-Performance
  • Good Care is About People
  • Working Better Together
  • Health Technology Assessment
  • Looking at the Link between Pain and Aggression
  • Reviewing Determinants of Health
  • End of Life Care Decisions in Focus
  • Rural Health Service Delivery
  • Looking at Organizational Problems
  • Integrating Evaluation with Planning
  • Rural Health Needs
  • Suicide Prevention
  • Student Health
  • Hepatitis A Immunity Project
• Participant Profiles
• Knowledge Infostructure
• Celebrating the Legacy

A Tool to Measure Quality Care

As Quality and Risk Management Coordinator for Alberta Health Services in Grande Prairie, part of Shelley MacGregor's job is to ensure that residents in local continuing care facilities receive the best care. "In 2005, new continuing care standards were put in place. While this was a good foundation, we had no way to monitor whether our providers and partners were following the standards. My SEARCH VI local project searched the literature for a tool that we could use."

Although MacGregor didn't find such a tool, what she did find may be even more useful. As it turns out, the Resident Assessment Instrument (RAI) and Minimum Data Set (MDS) tools, currently used in the area's continuing care facilities, are proven to be promising scientific and practical instruments to determine standards of care. MacGregor's research found that as long as data are entered correctly, the MDS tool will produce replicable and reliable results.

"This was a huge bonus for us - to find out that we already had something," says MacGregor. "Now the challenge is to operationalize it. Training is the key. Those who do resident assessments must be trained to ensure accurate data are entered. And they need the time to do this. The research results make a strong case for directing resources to this area because in the end we will have reliable, accurate indicators of how residents are being cared for. This is absolutely vital to ensuring safety and effectiveness of care."

With a nursing degree and an MBA, did MacGregor ever think that SEARCH might be "training overkill" for her? Definitely not, she says. "SEARCH complemented my academic training. I had the nursing skills and I had the management skills, but the piece I was missing was best practice attainment. SEARCH was the tool that helped me look critically at my practice."