CPHQ Practice Test 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which statistical tool is most appropriate for identifying the root cause of a recurring medication dispensing error?
- Run chart
- Fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram (Correct answer)
- Pareto chart
- Histogram
Correct answer: Fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram
A fishbone diagram systematically identifies potential causes of a problem by categorizing factors such as people, process, equipment, and environment.
Question 2: A hospital wants to reduce surgical site infections. Which improvement model is MOST commonly used in healthcare quality improvement?
- Six Sigma DMAIC
- Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) (Correct answer)
- Lean 5S
- Theory of Constraints
Correct answer: Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA)
The PDSA cycle is the most widely used quality improvement model in healthcare, promoting iterative testing of changes.
Question 3: When benchmarking clinical outcomes, what is the primary purpose of risk adjustment?
- To reduce hospital costs
- To compare performance across providers with different patient populations (Correct answer)
- To eliminate outliers from data
- To increase sample size
Correct answer: To compare performance across providers with different patient populations
Risk adjustment accounts for differences in patient severity and case mix so that outcomes comparisons are fair across different organizations.
Question 4: Under the National Patient Safety Goals, which patient identification practice is required before administering medications?
- Verify the room number only
- Use at least two patient identifiers (Correct answer)
- Check the patient's wristband color
- Confirm the diagnosis verbally
Correct answer: Use at least two patient identifiers
The Joint Commission requires at least two patient identifiers (e.g., name and date of birth) to be verified before any care or treatment.
Question 5: A quality professional reviews sentinel event data across a health system. Which action is the BEST first step?
- Immediately discipline the involved staff
- Conduct a root cause analysis (Correct answer)
- Report findings to the state without internal review
- Close the unit involved
Correct answer: Conduct a root cause analysis
Root cause analysis (RCA) is the required first step after a sentinel event to identify system-level contributing factors.
Question 6: Which measure is classified as a 'structure' measure in Donabedian's framework?
- 30-day readmission rate
- Patient satisfaction score
- Nurse-to-patient staffing ratio (Correct answer)
- Time to thrombolytic therapy
Correct answer: Nurse-to-patient staffing ratio
Structure measures assess the attributes of the setting where care is delivered, such as staffing ratios and facility resources.
Question 7: A CPHQ professional is designing a patient safety survey. Which response scale is most commonly used to measure attitudes and perceptions?
- Visual analog scale
- Likert scale (Correct answer)
- Guttman scale
- Binary yes/no scale
Correct answer: Likert scale
The Likert scale (e.g., strongly disagree to strongly agree) is the most widely used format for measuring attitudes in healthcare surveys.
CPHQ Practice Test 2
Which statistical tool is most appropriate for identifying the root cause of a recurring medication dispensing error?