Paper Example About Meaningful Executive Summary

The executive summary of any quality improvement initiatives should be able to blend between clarity and informative nature to ensure that the senior leader is well informed about the content of the quality improvement initiatives. The senior leaders do not have much time to keep listening through or reading very long executive summaries. As such, it is imperative that the executive summary is brief but detailed without leaving valuable information that is crucial for decision making by the senior leadership. Otherwise, a bad executive summary may not be able to attain the objective for what it was prepared.

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When the senior leader is reading the executive summary, he/she is looking for pertinent information regarding quality improvement initiatives. In essence, the leader is looking at how the initiatives will be implemented in health care and how that is likely to solve the patients problems. This information includes how the inadequacy of quality improvement strategies will continue affecting the health care facility. Additionally, the senior leader will be looking at the merits of the initiatives for the well-being of the patients, the facility and the link with the strategic goals of the organization. Information that relates to the desired outcome will be very central in the senior leaders expectation of the executive summary. Further, the leader will also be interested in the review through diagrams and graphics on how the desired outcome will look like when the initiatives are implemented in the organization. Finally, the leader will be interested in the evaluation criteria that will be applied in controlling the quality initiatives.

The executive summary length should be long enough to cover the required content but also short enough to allow the busy people to read such that it can be a stand-alone document. The recommended length is 10 percent of the main material to which the quality improvement strategies are prepared (Williams, Baker, Evans, Lucatorto, and Zittel, 2016). It is important to include the overarching goal of the quality improvement in the hospital and how that will promote customer satisfaction through ensuring the safety of the patients is prioritized through various approaches and methods. Additionally, it is important to provide necessary information about the methods used and the results attained and the importance of those results. The format should be simple having the fluency of content from the start of the original document to the end. All unnecessary spaces and subtitles should be avoided in the executive summary and content should flow from one paragraph to another logically without too many words.

The evaluation of the quality improvement initiatives will be three-fold. The structural measures will include the infrastructure, necessary resources, and professionals that are required to implement the initiatives (Dy, Kiley, Ast, Lupu, and Norton, 2015)They play a central role as they perform various roles geared towards quality health care provision. The evaluation of the professionals involves the consideration of the knowledge and skills that the employees possess to be able to bring change in the quality of healthcare services offered. The process-oriented approach will include the treatment procedures and protocols. The assessment of the processes will be considered whether they comply with the required standards and regulations. Moreover, in the evaluation criteria is the evaluation of the performance of the patients outcome, the level of care provided and seeking to identify quality areas that need improvement. For instance, the place of research in health care cannot be over-emphasized as such in measuring performances; one can evaluate to what extent is research supported by the healthcare mission and what impact has it had in the hospital.

Evaluation is an important aspect of the quality initiative development projects in health care. As such, in the executive summary should incorporate all the three aspects of assessment criteria briefly detailing how they would be measured. The senior leader should be able to see the whole scope of evaluation of the quality initiatives so that they can provide informed feedback based on facts. However, if the information is too scanty, the assessment part may not meet the objective for which it should. That is to mean that the control mechanism after implementation if it has gaps, may not be identified early enough before the change is effected.

Distinguishing between a good and a poor executive summary is not very difficult. An executive summary that is either too short or too long in relation to the main document would be regarded as bad. Further, one that is too wordy such that the writer just pulled content from the main material without shortening it would also not be a good report. A professional executive summary is one that is written skillfully with the inclusion of all vital information in a concise manner yet informative. A good executive summary has diagrams and graphics that speak volumes. Finally, a remarkable executive summary addresses the right audience giving the right information that responds to the needs of that audience. It has a goal(s), the problems at hand, ways to get the solution and the solution seen in the results part. Thus, an excellent executive summary flows logically providing the required information to a particular audience.

References

Dy, S. M., Kiley, K. B., Ast, K., Lupu, D., Norton, S. A., McMillan, S. C., ... & Casarett, D. J. (2015). Measuring what matters: top-ranked quality indicators for hospice and palliative care from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association. Journal of pain and symptom management, 49(4), 773-781.

Williams, T. E., Baker, K., Evans, L., Lucatorto, M. A., Moss, E., O'Sullivan, A., ... & Zittel, B. (2016). Registered Nurses as Professionals, Advocates, Innovators, and Collaborative Leaders: Executive Summary. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 21(3).