As time progresses, the focus on quality improvement within the NHS and wider healthcare gathers more and more momentum. To assist those tasked with improving patient care and making it more effective and safer CASC have worked hard to create a wider range of user-friendly tools, materials and resources. While our work has traditionally focused on measuring and improving care via clinical audit, we now use a much greater variety of concepts, methodologies and techniques. In a nutshell, whereas once healthcare tended to use a narrow band of tools to improve quality, we now have access to a toolbox of approaches. Of course, quality improvement does not stand still with new ideas, innovations and techniques being developed at a rapid rate and therefore we will endeavor to release new materials via this section of our website on a regular basis. This section of the website gives visitors access to many resources that are entirely free. However, if you do use any of our resources we kindly request that you acknowledge CASC and you must not remove our logo and branding. We will update this section of the website periodically. If you have any requests for particular materials that you think would be helpful, then please get in touch.
Resources for quality improvement
Quality improvement in healthcare is by its nature very diverse. The following resources can all be used in a quality improvement capacity. Where possible we have tried to link the materials in this section together, but this has proved a difficult task.
- QI methods
- QI guides to get you thinking
- 5 QI websites
- QI Twitter leaders
- 10 QI techniques in healthcare
- Plan, Do, Study, Act
- Model for Improvement
- Introduction to run charts
- Common survey pitfalls
Useful quality improvement guides
There are a number of quality improvement guides that have been published in recent years to help raise awareness of QI techniques and to assist healthcare staff in undertaking QI projects. We recommend the following:
Quality improvement leaders
There are a number of quality improvement leaders that have played a key role over time in laying the foundations for improving productivity, safety and customer-satisfaction. Although many of these individuals developed their ideas and theories in a business and often manufacturing environment, they have nevertheless had a significant impact on the quality improvement work currently being carried out across the globe in healthcare. We have provided details of some of the most significant leaders below: