What is ‘Quality Improvement’?

Abstract

Quality improvement (QI) is a proven approach to optimise the system that delivers patient care. This is achieved by continuously evaluating and testing how services are provided, and should ideally be integral to the activities of high performing, interdisciplinary teams. The science of quality improvement^1-4 has developed to the degree that there is now widespread appreciation of its value in determining the success or failure of complex interacting healthcare systems, the people who work within it, the variation in terms of outcomes resulting from the system, and how we make use of knowledge to affect these outcomes.