What’s the PDSA?
Johns Hopkins Center for Nursing Inquiry
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One of my favorite tools for quality improvement (QI) projects is the framework known as PDSA, or Plan-Do-Study-Act.
Having baseline data allows us to:
1.??????support that you have a problem
2.??????plan interventions utilizing a QI framework, such as PDSA.
PDSA is an easy framework to manage a complex process. Using the PDSA framework allows teams to identify interventions for improvement while monitoring outcomes to determine if interventions were effective. Basically, you’re providing evidence that the interventions worked!
The PDSA Cycle
One great thing about the PDSA framework is the ability to track one intervention at a time.
The PDSA is cyclical and most effective when planning one intervention at a time to see its impact on the outcomes (whether or not it improved your problem). If the first intervention the team tried didn’t have an impact, you can plan a new intervention to try and repeat the cycle.
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The Nursing Process
When I was first learning about QI frameworks, my mentor compared PDSA to the nursing process.
My mentor believes that all nurses, whether they know it or not, participate in QI. For example, if a patient has high blood pressure, you PLAN an intervention to decrease their blood pressure, DO your plan by perhaps giving them medication, re-assess or STUDY the results by checking blood pressure again, then ACT on those results if needed by either sustaining an improved outcome or repeating the PDSA cycle with a different intervention to improve that blood pressure.
That’s the PDSA process applied in patient care!
Once you have evidence that your approach worked, don’t forget to disseminate your findings through a poster, podium, or paper!
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About the Author: Holley Farley, MSN, RN is the Nursing Coordinator for Clinical Quality at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Holley has served as CUSP champion, safety ambassador and quality improvement champion for the Department of Medicine. Holley has had the opportunity to work on multiple quality improvement projects and utilize project management tools. In her current role, Holley is able to provide data and project management support throughout on quality improvement initiatives.