Quality Improvement in Healthcare: the Case for Change

Why is quality improvement in health and social care systems so difficult? Why is it so challenging to bring in new and better ways of organising health and social care services?

Many reasons have been put forward: lack of money; lack of appropriate or complete knowledge; excessive and perhaps unnecessary regulations; and entrenched professional opinions and interests.

This course suggests that the main reason is complexity. Health and social care systems are inherently complex, with many interconnected activities and processes, and thus difficult to measure, analyse, change and improve.

The course is designed for people working in health and social care organisations such as clinicians, allied health professionals, nurses, managers or administrators. People with a general interest in health and social care organisations, such as service users and carers, may also find the course of interest to them.

The course is designed for people working in health and social care organisations such as clinicians, allied health professionals, nurses, managers or administrators. People with a general interest in health and social care organisations, such as service users and carers, may also find the course of interest to them.

• Identify what quality and process improvement entails, especially in a health and social care setting
• Explain how quality improvement can lead to better outcomes for staff and organisations, including customers and/or patients
• Gain confidence to start and lead a quality improvement project within your organisation
• Identify how to access additional support, and get others to join with you in making improvements
• Discuss how quality improvement can help you deal with complexity in organisational systems and identify how to improve key areas without worsening others
• Explore how systems modelling and analytics techniques support quality improvement initiatives