Improving the quality of patient care through multifactorial interventions: a literature review

Abstract

This literature review identifies interventions that improve healthcare outcomes. Present healthcare systems have difficulty effectively communicating, resulting in frequent medication errors and staff burnout due to redundant work.

After analyzing a variety of literature reviews, systematic reviews, and randomized controlled trials, research aimed to resolve three key issues: patient and family satisfaction, staff burnout, and readmission rates. An effective intervention in these healthcare systems would mitigate poor healthcare outcomes, such as prolonged hospital stays. The length of patient stay could induce cognitive and physical impairment due to a lack of movement. Common themes identified across studies included staff collaboration, flexible visitation hours, access to outside resources, post-discharge interventions, and lowering readmission rates.

The most effective long-term interventions focused on staff collaboration and care beyond the inpatient stay, as they reduced staff burnout and mental decline after discharge. These interventions will resolve present problems in the healthcare system: evidence reveals that many patients have poor emotional outcomes after hospitalization, as they are impacted by staff burnout, which is correlated with higher rates of errors and poor patient care.

Future research should find interventions that effectively use resources, such as cost. Heavily researched interventions, including communication platforms and post-discharge, show consistent results in effectively mitigating present issues. However, there is limited high-quality evidence that takes into account the use of resources, like cost and burnout.

This literature review will determine effective interventions that showed promising improvements in the satisfaction of patients, family, and hospital staff.