Nursing Peer Review: A Practical Approach to Promoting Professional Nursing Accountability

Learn how to develop a streamlined, systematic approach to evaluating individual nursing standards and providing quality patient care

It’s time to implement formal nursing peer review, a valuable tool you can use to promote nurse autonomy and accountability and raise the standard of nursing excellence. Unfortunately, it can be a complicated process to implement, fraught with emotional and procedural issues. With the proper guidance, found in Nursing Peer Review, your facility can streamline the implementation process, resulting in better patient care, patient safety, and improved nurse professionalism and accountability.

Don’t wait for a problem to arise—be proactive!

This resource will help you develop a formalized, non-punitive structure to examine nurses after unexpected patient outcomes to evaluate whether the care provided was within the agreed upon standards of nursing care. It also includes a mechanism to track and trend data regarding quality of care issues. Having a peer review process in place gives nursing the means to evaluate themselves in a constructive atmosphere and focus on improving the standards of clinical care.

You’ll find all the resources you need to get your nursing peer review program up and running, including:

• Details of the benefits and rationale of nursing peer review
• Easy-to-follow, multi-step system for implementing a peer review program
• In-depth content on how to conduct chart reviews
• Sample case studies to illustrate the peer review process
• Tips on using peer review data to benchmark performance and track and trend peer review results
• Information on how peer review and nursing excellence relate to the ANCC Magnet Recognition Program®*
• A PowerPoint presentation to nurses on how peer review is about nurse autonomy and can be used to address quality of care issues in a non-punitive environment

It’s not just for physicians

Our medical staff brethren have been conducting peer review for decades, and it is time for nurses to catch up and establish the same standard of care. Nursing Peer Review provides hospitals with an effective, non-punitive way to deal with quality of care issues concerning the nursing staff, and allows organizations to examine nursing care issues or concerns in a systematic, continuous manner.

Your book also includes downloadable tools* such as:

• Nursing peer review case rating/scoring form
• Nursing peer review policy
• Confidentiality guidelines/agreement
• Process timeline
• Job summary and skills inventory
• Sample letters, including issue inquiry, exemplary care, and final determination

*Once you purchase this resource you’ll receive an email from customer service providing your login information to access your tools. Call 800/650-6787 for more information.

Take a look at the table of contents:

Chapter 1: Defining incident-based peer review
Chapter 2: Benefits, rationale, and setting clear expectations
Chapter 3: Immunity, confidentiality, and protecting information from discovery
Chapter 4: Step 1–Design a formal committee to support the peer review process
Chapter 5: Step 2–Establish the nursing peer review process
Chapter 6: Step 3–Educate nurse and non-nurse stakeholders
Chapter 7: Step 4–Implement the nursing peer review process
Chapter 8: Step 5–Track and trend your data
Chapter 9: Peer review and the ANCC Magnet Recognition Program®

Learning objectives:

• Identify three external sources imposing higher nursing standards
• Discuss the traditional structure for reviewing nursing issues
• Describe three different categories of performance review
• Explain the differences between peer and peer review
• List four goals of conducting peer review
• Identify what elements should be included in the dimensions of performance
• Describe the performance pyramid model
• Describe the three types of peer review protection laws
• Describe the components of Health Care Quality and Improvement Act of 1986
• Name two ways of protecting peer review information
• List the advantages for creating a formalized structure to support peer review
• Identify three benefits of the nursing peer review committee
• Describe the case review process prior to committee review
• Identify referral sources for case reviews
• List the steps when care is deemed “inappropriate”
• Describe the benefits of educating nurses and non-nurse stakeholders on the peer review process
• Identify communication methods that are effective during the implementation process
• List ways to reduce fear among nurses regarding the peer review process
• List the different components of the case review form
• Identify when a case would need further review by a clinical expert
• Describe why it is important to track and trend data
• List the different types of indicators used to evaluate nursing performance
• Explain how a professional peer review process supports the 14 Forces of Magnetism
• Describe how Saint Joseph’s conducts its peer review process

Faculty Disclosure Statement:

HCPro Inc. has confirmed that none of the faculty/presenters or contributors have any relevant financial relationships to disclose related to the content of this educational activity.

Who should buy this book?

Nursing Peer Reviewis the perfect resource for chief nursing officers, directors of nursing, VPs of nursing, VPs of patient care services, directors of education, staff development specialists, quality managers, risk managers, nurse managers, clinical managers, staff nurses, human  resources representatives, shared governance council members, and ANCC Magnet Recognition Program® directors.

Laura Harrington, RN, MHA, CPHQ, CHCQM, is the director of live events and continuing education and senior consultant at The Greeley Company, a division of HCPro, Inc. She is an experienced healthcare manager with extensive experience in the areas of performance improvement, risk, case management, and credentialing.

Marla Smith, MHSA, serves as an associate consultant for The Greeley Company in the quality and patient safety practice. Her areas of expertise are in medical staff and nursing peer review, medical and hospital quality performance improvement, and physician- and hospital-based data analysis.