Improving Clinician Competency in Assessing Blood Pressure Measurement: A Quality Improvement Project

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Purpose: The purpose of this quality improvement project was to assess the baseline knowledge for taking an accurate blood pressure measurement for nurse practitioners (NPs) working at a retail health clinic (RHC) before and after the completion of an education intervention. Methods: An 18-question pre-intervention survey was distributed to nurse practitioners working at RHCs located in South Carolina. The implementation of this quality improvement project consisted of a pre-intervention survey to assess knowledge for taking an accurate blood pressure measurement. The NPs were then asked to review an educational intervention that focused on the proper equipment, techniques to obtain an accurate blood pressure measurement, and common errors identified when measuring blood pressure. The same 18-question post-intervention survey was distributed four weeks after the initial recruitment. Results: A paired t-test was used to compare the results of the pre-intervention and post-intervention survey responses to determine if there is a statistical significance regarding knowledge gains. Based on the data analysis, there was an improvement in the post-survey responses after the participants reviewed the educational intervention. The p-value for the paired t-test was 0.01202 and was smaller than the alpha of 0.05 therefore providing evidence that there was a statistical difference between the mean pre-survey and the post-survey. Discussion: Based on the information gathered from the pre-and post-intervention survey there were areas of opportunity regarding the baseline knowledge of nurse practitioners working at RHCs and routine education about proper blood pressure measurement techniques could prove to be beneficial to the overall knowledge.

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Retail health clinics, nurse practitioners, blood pressure monitoring, blood pressure training
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