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Evidence scan: Quality improvement training for healthcare professionals
his section briely describes the scope and methods of the scan. Section 2 outlines some of
the content and teaching methods used in quality improvement training. Section 3 explores the
efectiveness of various types of training.
1.2 Deining quality
im prove m e nt
Quality improvement is not solely about ‘making things better’ by doing the same things and ‘trying
harder’. Instead, quality improvement requires a diferent approach to traditional ‘fact-based’ learning
and needs a new set of knowledge and skills to put this approach into practice. For the purposes of this
scan, training in quality improvement was deined as any activity that explicitly aimed to teach health
professionals about methods or skills that could be used to improve quality.
Table 1 lists the domains of quality improvement that the Health Foundation is interested in.
he scan focused on training to support health professionals to develop knowledge and skills in
these key areas.
Quality improvement was not deined solely as ‘continuous quality improvement’, ‘total quality
management’ or other named models, but rather as a way of approaching change in healthcare that
focuses on self-relection, assessing needs and gaps, and considering how to improve in a multifaceted
manner. In this deinition, training about quality improvement aims to create an ethos of continuous
relection and a commitment to ongoing improvement. It aims to provide practitioners and
managers with the skills and knowledge needed to assess the performance of healthcare and individual
and population needs, to understand the gaps between current activities and best practice and to
have the tools and conidence to develop activities to reduce these gaps.
hus, the scan did not focus only on narrowly deined quality improvement models such as ‘plan,
do, study, act’ PDSA cycles, Six Sigma, LEAN and so on – although it included courses that deined
quality improvement in this way too.
Courses about techniques such as evidence-based medicine, statistics and leadership were only
included if the stated aim was to improve quality. Courses about improving a speciic condition
or pathway were included if they incorporated material about improvement techniques that could
also be widely applied to other topics.
Terminology
he focus was on accredited education and ongoing training through courses and workshops
rather than resources such as books, mentoring, fellowships or other learning methods.
he term ‘education’ is oten used to describe formal courses run by higher educational
institutions whereas the term ‘training’ is broader and encompasses CPD and short courses run by a
variety of providers. For simplicity, the scan uses the general term ‘training’ to apply to both formally
accredited education and other CPD.
Unless otherwise speciied, the trends reported are generalised to relect what is happening throughout
the Western world.
THE HEALTH FOUNDATION
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Evidence scan: Quality improvement training for healthcare professionals
Table 1: Potential components of quality improvement
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Components Examples of topic areas
The wider context How the health system is structured and how it works
Historical, social and political context within which health systems develop and operate
Health policy Accountability
Professionalism Human behaviour
Psychology of change Learning styles
Leadership Teamwork and collaboration
Management Multidisciplinary working
Reflection and learning from mistakes Needs and preferences of people
who use health services Seeing healthcare from the user’s perspective
Identifying and targeting the needs and preferences of different subgroups of users Acquiring tools to assess and respond to users
Healthcare as a process Systems thinking
Complexity theory and interdependencies Spread
Sustainability Planning and predicting
Understanding risk and risk management The nature of knowledge
Different forms of evidence The philosophy of science
Variation Measurement
Local versus generalisable knowledge Small versus large scale change
Collecting, analysing and interpreting data Reporting and displaying information
Process mapping
THE HEALTH FOUNDATION
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Evidence scan: Quality improvement training for healthcare professionals
1.3 Ide ntifying e vide nc e
