Three Questions - A Quick Glimpse Into WHO is Using SQUIRE and WHY - Spring/Summer 2010

Marcia Nelson, MD, is the Vice President for Medical Affairs at Enloe Medical Center in Chico, California. Her primary focus has been the annual Quality Summit, which highlights the past year’s quality improvement successes. Seeing an opportunity to share this information with a broader audience, Dr. Nelson attended the 2009 SQUIRE Guidelines seminar at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement ( www.IHI.org ) National Forum, and her team is using the guidelines to create a variety of materials that engage the medical center, community and others in dialogue about quality medical care.

1.  What have you found most interesting about SQUIRE?
The accessibility and clarity of the guidelines are what impressed me the most. I learned about SQUIRE at the 2009 IHI National Forum and left the seminar knowing I had a clear roadmap for organizing and sharing the quality improvement work done at Enloe Medical Center.

2.  How has SQUIRE helped in writing about your improvement work?
I used the guidelines to create poster presentation templates for the twenty eight quality improvement projects shared at our April 2010 Quality Summit. The templates queried the presenters on key areas included in the SQUIRE guidelines. This consistent content enhanced the professionalism of the presentations.

3.  Has SQUIRE influenced how you plan for future work?
Sharing our quality improvement accomplishments with our community and colleagues has become a key leadership strategy. We will use the SQUIRE guidelines to submit poster presentations for national meetings and we are in the process of creating a case study of our Quality Summit successes. Sharing our stories, with the help of the SQUIRE guidelines, has energized the quality movement at Enloe Medical Center.