Effect of Health Care Accreditation Council survey site visit on perceived stress level among Jordanian healthcare providers

Perceived stress among staff in Saudi Arabian dental colleges before and after an accreditation process: A cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND

Accreditation processes are extensively employed to guarantee the quality of higher education institutions. However, this process can potentially generate a stressful atmosphere for staff, thus impacting their ability to perform optimally under pressure.

AIM

To examine the knowledge of the National Commission for Academic Assessment and Accreditation (NCAAA) and its effects on perceived stress among dental college staff before and after the program accreditation process.

METHODS

The present cross-sectional questionnaire-based study included 300 employees from three dental colleges. The same employees had to fill out the questionnaire 1 mo after the NCAAA process.

RESULTS

Approximately 51.33% of the included employees believed that NCAAA is essential to attract quality students to join the program before and after the program. A total of 44.67% felt that their stress was high before, and 31.33% had low stress levels before and after NCAAA. These findings were statistically significant (P ≤ 0.05).

CONCLUSION

NCAAA raised the prestige of the institution and specific programmes and increased prospects to attract better students, staff, and money, according to the employees. In addition to their needed teaching, research, and other service responsibilities, this work requires a tremendous amount of faculty effort and may cause them stress.

Healthcare system development in the Middle East and North Africa region: Challenges, endeavors and prospective opportunities

Background

Countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have been investing in the development of their health systems through implementing reforms to improve health care delivery for their nations. However, these countries are still facing challenges in providing equitable, high quality healthcare services. There is limited published literature supporting the previous and ongoing attempts that have been made to improve health system performance in MENA countries.

Aims

This review aims to describe experiences of health system development efforts in the MENA region, highlight progress, identify challenges that need be addressed and future opportunities to achieve responsive and efficient health systems. It also aimed to provide recommendations to further support these health systems toward evolution and performance improvement.

Methods

A literature review was conducted by searching different databases including PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar and other electronic resources to identify articles and publications describing health systems development in the MENA region from 1975 to 2022. It also included grey literature, reports and policy and planning documents by international organizations. The identified references were reviewed to extract, analyze, organize and report the findings.

Results

The review revealed emerging evidence describing governmental initiatives to introduce health system reforms at different levels in the MENA countries. These include initiatives targeting the various elements controlling health system reform: financing, payment, organization, regulation and behavior of providers and consumers. There are several challenges facing the health systems of MENA countries including the rising burden of chronic diseases, inequitable access to health services, deficiency in health workforce, shortage in the use of effective health information systems and leadership challenges. The review identified several key areas that can benefit from further improvement to support health system reforms. These include improving the structure, organization and financing of health systems, health workforce development, effective data management and engagement of key stakeholders to achieve adequate health system reforms.

Conclusion

The MENA countries have made significant steps to improve the performance of their health systems; yet achieving a comprehensive health reform will require collaboration of various stakeholders including health policy makers, healthcare professionals, and central to the success of the reform, the patients.

MRI Safety Practice Observations in MRI Facilities Within the Kingdom of Jordan, Compared to the 2020 Manual on MR Safety of the American College of Radiology

Purpose

The absence of ionizing radiation in MRI applications does not guarantee absolute safety. Implementing of safety guidelines can ensure high-quality practice in the clinical MRI with the minimum risk. For this purpose, this cross-section quantitative study conducted in Jordan Kingdom aimed to assess current MRI safety guidelines in comparison with those of 2020 Manual on MR Safety of the American College of Radiology (ACR).

Patients and Methods

A site observation study of 38 MRI units was undertaken in June 2021. A well-structured MRI safety questionnaire was the primary data collection method. Data were subjected to a descriptive statistics content analysis by the SPSS version 20. The results were analyzed to yield comprehensive discussions.

Results

A total of 38 MRI facilities in participated in this study with the responding rate of 44.7%. Patient screening areas and changing rooms were available in about 29% (11/38) of the MRI facilities. Most facilities (55%, 21/38) conducted verbal screening only whereas 21% implemented both written and verbal screening for their patients and companions in zone II, which was present in a percentage of 29% in the approached facilities. Meanwhile, only 13 (43.2%) of 38 facilities used handheld magnets for physical screening, 25 (65.8%) of MRI units did not use any kind of ferromagnetic metal detection systems. Three (7.9%) participating centers had MR-safe wheelchairs, ventilators, anesthesia machines, and stretchers. Most MRI facilities participating in this study (71%) had emergency preparedness plans for alternative power outages. Despite a relatively low number of participating centers having an emergency exit or code (26.3% and 10.5%, respectively), none of them performed practice drills for such scenarios.

Conclusion

Investing in new MR-safe equipment requires introducing ferromagnetic detecting systems. More research is needed to establish the degree of MRI professional’s safety-related education.

The perceptions of healthcare professionals about accreditation and its impact on quality of healthcare in Kuwait: a qualitative study

RATIONALE, AIMS, AND OBJECTIVES

The accreditation of healthcare organizations has been applied as a quality assurance mechanism of healthcare services. Kuwait health authorities implemented a national healthcare accreditation program at the governmental healthcare system. This study aimed to explore the perceptions of healthcare professionals (HCPs) about healthcare accreditation, perceived challenges to implementing accreditation, and views on how to overcome these challenges.

METHODS

A phenomenological qualitative framework was adopted to conduct focus group interviews to explore perceptions of HCPs about accreditation in governmental healthcare system. Data were collected from 30 HCPs using seven focus group interviews. The verbatim transcripts of the interviews were analysed using the framework approach.

RESULTS

The HCPs indicated that accreditation enhanced patient safety culture at their organizations through staff adherence to good practices, improved documentation and patient handover practices, and incident reporting. The facilitators to the implementation of accreditation that emerged from interviews included administrative support, staff training about accreditation, and expansion in application of electronic systems. Participants reported several challenges to implementing accreditation including challenges related to staff (eg, high workload, burdens imposed by accreditation requirements), challenges related to organizational system and resources (eg, poor teamwork among HCPs, inadequate infrastructure in some facilities), and challenges related to patients (eg, poor understanding about accreditation). However, most participants expressed positive attitudes towards accreditation and appreciated its impact on quality of healthcare. Participants suggested ways to support accreditation such as increasing staff numbers to reduce workload, enhancing staff motivation and education about accreditation, developing proactive leadership and staff teamwork, and improving patients' awareness about accreditation.

CONCLUSIONS

HCPs in Kuwait expressed positive attitudes towards accreditation while also recognizing the challenges that may hinder its implementation. The collaboration between different stakeholders in this process is essential to overcome these challenges and support HCPs to meet accreditation standards and improve quality of healthcare services.

The impact of hospital accreditation on the quality of healthcare: a systematic literature review

BACKGROUND

Accreditation is viewed as a reputable tool to evaluate and enhance the quality of health care. However, its effect on performance and outcomes remains unclear. This review aimed to identify and analyze the evidence on the impact of hospital accreditation.

METHODS

We systematically searched electronic databases (PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, EMBASE, MEDLINE (OvidSP), CDSR, CENTRAL, ScienceDirect, SSCI, RSCI, SciELO, and KCI) and other sources using relevant subject headings. We included peer-reviewed quantitative studies published over the last two decades, irrespective of its design or language. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, two reviewers independently screened initially identified articles, reviewed the full-text of potentially relevant studies, extracted necessary data, and assessed the methodological quality of the included studies using a validated tool. The accreditation effects were synthesized and categorized thematically into six impact themes.

RESULTS

We screened a total of 17,830 studies, of which 76 empirical studies that examined the impact of accreditation met our inclusion criteria. These studies were methodologically heterogeneous. Apart from the effect of accreditation on healthcare workers and particularly on job stress, our results indicate a consistent positive effect of hospital accreditation on safety culture, process-related performance measures, efficiency, and the patient length of stay, whereas employee satisfaction, patient satisfaction and experience, and 30-day hospital readmission rate were found to be unrelated to accreditation. Paradoxical results regarding the impact of accreditation on mortality rate and healthcare-associated infections hampered drawing firm conclusions on these outcome measures.

CONCLUSION

There is reasonable evidence to support the notion that compliance with accreditation standards has multiple plausible benefits in improving the performance in the hospital setting. Despite inconclusive evidence on causality, introducing hospital accreditation schemes stimulates performance improvement and patient safety. Efforts to incentivize and modernize accreditation are recommended to move towards institutionalization and sustaining the performance gains. PROSPERO registration number CRD42020167863.

Association and correlation between stress, musculoskeletal pain and resilience in nurses before hospital accreditation maintenance assessment

OBJECTIVE

to associate and correlate musculoskeletal pain, stress and resilience of nurses in the maintenance of Hospital Accreditation Certification.

METHOD

longitudinal study in two moments, before and after the Accreditation maintenance visit, March and June 2019, with 53 nurses from a hospital institution. The data collected was: sociodemographic, clinical and occupational variables, stress, osteomuscular pain and resilience. Descriptive variables, Chi-square test, t test, Fisher's exact test, Pearson's correlation and Spearman's correlation coefficient were used.

RESULTS

most of the study participants had average stress levels before and after the evaluation. Most of those who reported pain were at medium stress levels at both times. The resilience capacity increased after the evaluation, which demonstrates that the experienced stressors were adequately addressed. There was no significant association between the cortisol levels and the perceived stress.

CONCLUSION

occupational stress and musculoskeletal pain were experienced by nurses during the Accreditation processes. It was evident that individuality permeated the perception of stress and resilience allowed to overcome the tensions experienced. The study identified that there is a need for planning and implementation of actions to collaborate with the nurses in the best confrontation, aiming to promote resilience.

The impact of hospital accreditation in selected Middle East countries: a scoping review

PURPOSE

There is conflicting evidence concerning the impact of hospital accreditation programmes, including across the Middle East Region, where such programmes have been most recently implemented in Iran, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. This paper maps available evidence regarding the impact of hospital accreditation in these three countries and draws attention to knowledge gaps for consideration.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

This scoping review was conducted in 2020, using the Arksey and O'Malley framework. Five research databases were searched, along with five government and accreditation agency websites. Searches were complemented by citation chaining. English and Arabic publications evaluating hospital accreditation in the selected countries were included. Commentaries and articles not based on primary data collection and reviews of existing registry data were excluded. There were no exclusions based on study design or methods. A descriptive numerical summary and thematic analysis were used to synthesise the literature.

FINDINGS

studies were included. The majority (n = 35) were published since 2014 and conducted in Saudi Arabia (n = 16). Four themes emerged: organisational impacts, patient safety, quality of care, and patient satisfaction and experience. The literature generally highlights positive impacts of accreditation, but most studies were based solely on health professionals' subjective perceptions. "Organisational impacts" had the largest, and strongest body of supporting evidence, while "patient safety" had the least and most variable evidence.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

Opportunities to strengthen the design and evaluation of hospital accreditation programmes in the selected countries are highlighted. Additional experimental, mixed-method research is recommended to strengthen the evidence base and inform practical enhancements to hospital accreditation programmes in the region.