Quality Improvement
Welcome to Nottinghamshire Healthcare's Quality Improvement page
Information here is for our colleagues, our partner organisations, service users and patients who are interested in finding out more about QI, want to know how they can get involved, or need support on their QI journey.
What is Quality Improvement (QI)?
Quality Improvement, or QI, is a simple, structured evidence-based way that uses tools and techniques to improve the experience and outcomes for patients and others who use our services and carers. It provides a framework, for those closest to issues impacting care, to look at what we do and to see if we can do it better, learning from data and solving problems that affect how well things are done. It's looking at things big or small with a different lens.
Why is QI important?
Quality improvement is important to enable us to find ways of making our services work better. It helps us to fix problems to enhance patient safety and improve health outcomes for our patients and service users, as well as helping us to save money by spending less and doing more with the same resources. It helps us to build a culture of continuous learning where everyone has a voice and our colleagues, patients, families, and carers can collaborate to improve the way we do things.
How QI works
Quality Improvement works best when everyone - patients, families, carers and colleagues help lead the way. Instead of leaders telling people what to do, they support teams to try new ideas and find better ways of working together.
Patients and carers bring knowledge of how care is experienced, and colleagues bring knowledge of how care is delivered. Involving patients and carers as partners is crucial if QI is to address what matters to people. It leads to more meaningful and effective change.
Watch the animation film below which talks more about why QI is important?
The 5 Ps of effective QI
- Purpose: What are you going to do?
- People: Who are you doing it with?
- Performance: What is currently happening?
- Process: What makes it happen?
- Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA): What will you do about it?
Key principles of QI
- Staff, service users, carers and families leading improvement
- Focussed on measurement
- Using a consistent methodology
- Celebrating and sharing learning
The Model for Improvement
The Model for Improvement is a way to help make things better. It is the method our Trust uses. It helps us spot problems, understand them and test new ideas to see if they work.
Three key questions that can be asked in any order:
- What are we trying to accomplish?
- How will we know that our change is an improvement?
- What changes can we make that will result in the improvement?
The Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle to test and adapt changes to ensure they result in the desired improvement.
For more information please visit the Institute for Healthcare Improvement library.
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