Mid Sweden University

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present the state of the art when it comes to QM and nursing science, focusing on patient transfers from Intensive Care Unit (ICU)  to general wards, using the TQM values:  ‘customer focus’, ‘leadership commitment’, ‘participation of everybody’, ‘continuous improvement’, ‘process focus’ and ‘base decisions on facts’ as an analytical framework.

Methodology/approach Literature from the research fields of QM and nursing sciences was reviewed and analyzed with the TQM values as a framework.

Findings – No articles were found concerning QM within the specific area of patient transfer from ICU to general wards but the results are a summary of QM research and nursing science sorted under the TQM values. A result is that interdisciplinary care can improve a culture of safety and it can decrease mortality rates, staff turnover and increase quality of care and patient satisfaction. This means that there is a need for working with the QM culture in the patient transfer from ICU to general wards.

Practical implications – This review identified a large need for empirical research in the field of health care where CI methods needs to be described, for example what tool or method that was applied and how it was applied and how the implementation were conducted.