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Tools
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) offers practical, research-based tools and other resources to help a variety of health care organizations, providers, and others make care safer in all health care settings.
Team Strategies and Tools To Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS)
TeamSTEPPS is a customizable program plus specialized tools to reduce risks to patient safety by training clinicians in teamwork and communication skills. Materials include a leader's guide for trainers, a pocket guide of important concepts for trainees, and a multimedia guide featuring training videos to illustrate various concepts. There are TeamSTEPPS modules for (1) hospitals (2) medical offices (3) long-term care facilities (4) rapid response teams (5) staff treating patients with limited English proficiency, and (6) dental offices.
Date Published: May 2016 Setting of Care: Ambulatory Care, Hospital, Long-term Care, Outpatient Surgery
Ten Attributes of Health Literate Healthcare Organizations
Find AHRQ tools that can assist healthcare systems address health literacy and each of 10 attributes of health literate healthcare organizations.
Date Published: June 2019 Setting of Care: Ambulatory Care, Hospital, Long-term Care
Toolkit for Decolonization of non-ICU Patients With Devices
This toolkit can help hospital infection prevention programs implement a decolonization protocol that was found to reduce bloodstream infections by roughly 30 percent in adult inpatients who were not in intensive care units and who had specific medical devices. It includes implementation instructions, demonstration videos, and customizable tools.
Date Published: March 2022 Setting of Care: Hospital
Toolkit for Improving Perinatal Safety
This toolkit helps hospital labor and delivery units improve patient safety, team communication, and quality of care for mothers and their newborns with an aim of decreasing maternal and neonatal adverse events resulting from poor communication and system failures.
Date Published: June 2017 Setting of Care: Hospital
Toolkit for Preventing CLABSI and CAUTI in ICUs
This customizable, educational toolkit aims to help hospital intensive care units (ICUs) reduce rates of central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) and catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI). Using the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) and other evidence-based practices, the toolkit helps ICUs assess their current CLABSI and CAUTI prevention efforts, has resources to help ICUs overcome common challenges in infection-reduction efforts, and provides the clinical and cultural guidance to make changes needed to decrease CLABSI and CAUTI rates.
Date Published: April 2022 Setting of Care: Hospital
Toolkit for Reduction of Clostridium difficile Infections Through Antimicrobial Stewardship
This toolkit assists hospital staff and leadership in developing an effective antimicrobial stewardship program with the potential to reduce C. difficile. It helps hospitals consider the organizational changes and resources needed to create and sustain an effective program for reducing C. difficile.
Date Published: September 2012 Setting of Care: Hospital
Toolkit for Using the AHRQ Quality Indicators
This toolkit is designed to support hospitals in assessing and improving the quality and safety of care they provide. The QI Toolkit is designed as a flexible, modifiable set of tools that can be selected according to a hospital's needs.
Date Published: July 2016 Setting of Care: Hospital
Toolkit to Engage High-Risk Patients In Safe Transitions Across Ambulatory Settings
A Toolkit to Engage High-Risk Patients in Safe Transitions Across Ambulatory Settings provides strategies, tools, and education to help staff who work in ambulatory care facilities prepare patients for new and follow-up appointments in order to prevent errors during transitions in care.
Date Published: December 2017 Setting of Care: Ambulatory Care
Toolkit To Improve Safety for Mechanically Ventilated Patients
Hospital intensive care unit (ICU) staff can use the toolkit to apply the proven principles and methods of AHRQ's Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) to reduce complications for mechanically ventilated patients.
Date Published: March 2017 Setting of Care: Hospital
Tools for Reducing Central Line-Associated Blood Stream Infections
These tools help implement evidence-based practices and eliminate central line-associated blood stream infections (CLABSI). When used with the CUSP (Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program) Toolkit, these tools dramatically reduced CLABSI rates in more than 1,000 hospitals across the country.
Date Published: January 2012 Setting of Care: Hospital, Outpatient Surgery
