Improving Quality in Healthcare: Questioning the Work for Effective Change

This book is for anyone who is interested in improving healthcare quality, including practicing clinicians and leaders, as well as interested citizens. It challenges the anti-intellectual, QI tool-driven approach that dominates healthcare quality improvement work and offers a framework to question and improve quality and reduce failure demand. It also explores how an inter-disciplinary perspective can reframe aspects of quality thinking.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 01 January 2024
Publisher: SAGE Publishing

This comprehensive book is a valuable resource for anyone seeking to enhance healthcare quality. It caters to a wide range of stakeholders, including those traditionally responsible for quality matters, practicing clinicians, and leaders. Moreover, it holds relevance for interested citizens who have a keen interest in the quality of care.

The authors, with extensive experience in working on healthcare quality issues at national, regional, and local levels, aim to challenge the prevailing anti-intellectual, QI tool-driven, and mechanistic approach that still dominates much of healthcare quality improvement work. They argue that these approaches fail to consider the patient and organizational context, leading to reductionism, cherry-picking, and the atomization of complex issues, ultimately resulting in simplistic and unsustainable outcomes.

The book offers a rich exploration of some of the often overlooked and misunderstood core concepts of quality. It delves into their historical background and significance in a contemporary context, providing a solid foundation for understanding quality principles. The authors propose a framework that utilizes four interconnected conceptual domains as a valuable tool for improving quality and reducing failure demand. This framework encourages a critical re-examination of the dominant approaches to change that are frequently adopted in quality work, many of which have their roots in scientific management and have yet to deliver the promised results, particularly in terms of transformational change.

Furthermore, the book explores how an inter-disciplinary perspective can reframe aspects of quality thinking, fostering a more holistic and integrated approach to healthcare quality improvement. By bringing together experts from various fields, the book offers a multi-faceted and comprehensive understanding of quality issues, enabling stakeholders to develop effective strategies and solutions that address the complex and multifaceted nature of healthcare delivery.

In conclusion, this book is a must-read for anyone passionate about improving healthcare quality. It provides a thought-provoking and insightful exploration of key concepts, frameworks, and approaches to quality improvement. By challenging the status quo
quo and promoting a more patient-centered and interdisciplinary approach, it offers a valuable roadmap for healthcare professionals, policymakers, and interested citizens alike.

Weight: 394g
Dimension: 241 x 170 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781529733051