Using Plan-Do-Study-Act Cycle to Enhance Completeness of Suicide Firearm Reporting.
The Rhode Island Violent Death Reporting System (RIVDRS) collects comprehensive surveillance data on violent deaths to support violence prevention programs in Rhode Island and nationwide. Successful collection of firearm information is critical to understanding gun violence in public health. A recent quality improvement (QI) project was performed to improve gun information collection in the RIVDRS program. Our aim was to increase the presence of firearm model information for 2014 suicides from 50% to 80% by December 31, 2015. We used the 2014 RIVDRS data and the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle for this project. Our efforts achieved a 50% increase in the number of firearm model reporting. If we work more closely with police departments, they may understand the data importance, and be more likely to include the firearm information in their reports. We describe this process and provide lessons learned that can be generalizable to other states' violent death reporting system. [Full article available at http://rimed.org/rimedicaljournal-2017-02.asp].
Senior Public Health Epidemiologist in the Center for Health Data and Analysis at the Rhode Island Department of Health, Providence, Rhode Island and is Assistant Professor of the Practice of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Brown University.
Yongwen
Y
Jiang
consultant who serves as the data abstractor/data manager of the Rhode Island Violent Death Reporting System, through a contract with JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc.
Shannon
S
Young
consultant who serves as the data abstractor/data manager of the Rhode Island Violent Death Reporting System, through a contract with JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc.
Karen
K
Foss
Director of Academic Center at the Rhode Island Department of Health and an instructor of the QI Team 4 training program.
Magaly
M
Angeloni
Senior Human Services Policy and Systems Specialist for the Office of Food Protection at the Rhode Island Department of Health and an instructor of the QI Team 4 training program.
Erica
E
Norcini
Chief of the Center for Health Data and Analysis at the Rhode Island Department of Health, and serve as the co-PI and the program manager of RIVDRS.
Samara
S
Viner-Brown
D005389:Firearms; D006801:Humans; D016495:Police; D011634:Public Health; D058996:Quality Improvement; D012237:Rhode Island; D012308:Risk Management / Q000592:standards*; D013405:Suicide / Q000706:statistics & numerical data* / Q000639:trends; D014754:Violence / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*
Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle; Rhode Island Violent Death Reporting System; firearm; quality improvement; suicide