Is your team about to embark on a new Quality Improvement (QI) project that involves patients but you’re not sure how to structure it? Are you looking for a meaningful and empathetic approach that champions the user perspective from start to finish and complements traditional QI methods? Design thinking has been gaining attention across a wide range of industries over the past several years, building a strong reputation for its emphasis on forging …
Next Generation Improvement Part 1: A Call for the Strategic Deployment of Improvement Modalities
Quality Improvement (QI) is in the middle of a “market surge”. Over the last few years, we have seen QI move from being a fad to having an established presence in academia, hospital operations, and science. A plot of Pubmed articles with the search criteria “quality improvement” OR “QI” yield a very flat slope between 1948 and 2009 (Figure 1). Since then, there has been a notable increase, going from 3200 articles to …
HiQuiPs: Building Quality & Safety Infrastructure
You’ve completed a Quality Improvement (QI) project and you’re thinking about how you might align your efforts with those of your colleagues to build a community of practice that can prioritize, support, and deliver a comprehensive program of high-quality Q&S work. But where to start? What are the crucial steps and antecedents for success in building a robust Quality & Safety (Q&S) infrastructure? Welcome to this HiQuiPs post that offers a roadmap on …
HiQuiPs: Consent in Quality Improvement
You’re ready to start a quality improvement (QI) project aimed at improving the effectiveness of the communication surrounding patient prognosis by providers. Your Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles involve retrospective chart reviews, surveys with patients to understand their experiences, and 1:1 key informant interviews with inter-disciplinary staff members in your department. You’ve learned about navigating ethics in quality improvement , and have reached out to your institution’s Research Ethics Board or QI leadership to determine the process …