All staff must be aware of the importance of creating a welcoming and safe healthcare environment. This includes knowing what must be present for such an environment to exist. In this course, you will learn best practices for creating a healthcare environment that best serves the safety needs of the people who are receiving services and makes them feel welcome.

Improving hospital processes surrounding discharge and transitions of care can reduce adverse events and readmissions. Process improvements may also lead to better patient adherence to the treatment plan and their overall experience with care. Healthcare professionals must understand care coordination and transitions of care and how they impact HCAHPS survey results.

The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey is a national standardized survey required for hospitals participating in Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) programs. Survey results are linked to hospital reimbursement from CMS. 

This course will teach you about the various types of child abuse and neglect that are currently the most common, and the physical and behavioral warning signs that may accompany different kinds of child maltreatment. You will learn some general guidelines for mandatory reporting and how you can find out the specific reporting requirements of your particular state.

Pain is often underestimated and undertreated in the pediatric population due to many factors. As a result, children’s health outcomes are directly impacted without proper recognition and pain management, and quality of life is reduced. Physicians and nursing professionals must learn to assess and treat pediatric pain appropriately while caring for hospitalized children. This course describes the past and future status of pain management in children, pharmacological and non-pharmacological management options, and the complexities of managing pain in special populations.

Pediatric ambulatory care consists of well-child checks, preventive care, and the treatment and management of acute and chronic health conditions. Nurses provide holistic care to the pediatric patient by synthesizing their nursing assessments with parent/caregiver concerns. Nurses collaborate with the healthcare team to identify and address common pediatric health problems encountered in the ambulatory care setting.

Healthcare professionals often encounter patients experiencing agitation or displaying hostile behavior during their careers. De-escalation is a set of approaches and techniques used to assist patients in self-calming to avoid incidents of harm to self, others, or property. Professionals should understand escalation and physiological responses to threats. After determining the risk of escalation, healthcare professionals can use various aspects of verbal communication, such as tone and pitch, and nonverbal communication skills to defuse potentially hostile situations and apply the least restrictive interventions. 

The prevalence of medical errors correlates with increased risk of patient harm in the healthcare setting. Since most errors are related to systems issues/failures and not to inadequate care by providers, it is critical to understand the breadth of the problem and the best ways to prevent adverse events and medical errors to improve patient safety. 

Within any healthcare organization, there are systems, policies, and procedures that can be improved or events that could have been prevented. A root cause analysis is a tool that helps healthcare organizations improve their systems by using a team process of discovery. When you understand how to use a root cause analysis, you can apply it to create better solutions, prevent adverse events, and create more effective and efficient systems. This course discusses what a root cause analysis is and how to use it.