QI Education
Resources and networks to help healthcare professionals ensure their practice prioritises patient safety and strives to improve the experiences and outcomes of children and young people, and their families.
Dr Yincent Tse, the RCPCH Clinical Lead for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, talks about how quality improvement and safety measures can easily be incorporated into everyday clinical practice:
Quality improvement encapsulates all aspects of patient care – not just the clinical experience but service development, review and evaluation. In this roundtable podcast led by two RCPCH QI Trainee Representatives, the QI Central Project Board discuss their own improvement journeys and what quality improvement means to them:
Here are some resources and networks from across the paediatrics and improvement community that can help you ensure your practice prioritises patient safety, and that it strives to improve the experiences and outcomes of your patients and their families:
QI methodology
The London School of Paediatrics are working with QIClearn™ to offer healthcare professionals an exciting, innovative way of learning Quality Improvement, designed to fit around busy schedules with access from your own device. This online learning will be complemented with virtual half day workshops and access to coaching from mentors. The programme is open to paediatric trainees, consultants, allied healthcare professionals and patient/parent learners – it is also on the approved HEE list of London School of Paediatrics courses for trainees to claim funding.
The RCPCH created a quality improvement eLearning module on Compass with the aim of introducing QI methods and tools in a clear and simple fashion, avoiding as much jargon as possible, and to help clinicians understand what quality improvement is and how it can be used in healthcare with examples drawn from paediatrics. ‘Introduction to Quality Improvement’ was authored by Dr Charlotte Clements with editorial input from Dr Yincent Tse and Dr Colin Dunkley, and can be accessed by signing in to your RCPCH Compass account.
A programme of online, self-directed mini courses in quality improvement for all those involved in health and social services organised into 4 learning areas: Quality Improvement Theory, Quality Improvement Tools, Measuring for Quality Improvement, and Spreading Quality Improvement. Register on the NHS England QI Learning Platform to enrol onto the courses.
This series of papers exploring how to improve the quality of health care delivery is produced by the British Medical Journal in partnership with and funded by the Health Foundation. It aims to support clinicians by providing thoughtful and targeted material on key topics in quality improvement, and help to guide quality improvement learning and practice. All articles in the series are open access and a full collection of the articles in the series so far is now available to download.
ISQua’s mission statement is “to inspire and drive improvement in health, and the safety and quality of healthcare worldwide.” Established in 1985 with a vision to promote quality and safety in health care through international co-operation and collaboration, ISQua is dedicated to making this vision a reality. Their online Fellowship Programme inspires the advancement of Quality Improvement and Patient Safety initiatives within the healthcare industry by fostering a global community of passionate healthcare professionals, who are united by a single common goal – safer healthcare.
The Sustainability in Quality Improvement framework (SusQI) is an approach developed by the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare with partners to help healthcare professionals integrate sustainable healthcare into healthcare improvement. Open access resources for SusQI include project resources, an educator pack and case studies. There are also details of publications, training courses, and the Health Foundation Q Community’s Sustainable Healthcare Special Interest Group network.
QI tools
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s QI essentials toolkit has tools and templates needed to start a quality improvement project. Each of the ten tools can be used with the Model for Improvement, Lean, or Six Sigma, and includes a short description, instructions, an example, and a blank template. QI tools included are; cause and effect diagrams, failure modes and effects analysis, run charts and control charts, and Plan-Do-Study-Act rapid-cycle worksheets.
To embed quality improvement into everyday work, it is vital that we are able to compare our outcomes with others, and to share and develop improvement opportunities between different units and hospitals. These standardised data collection tools developed by Dr Oliver Rackham, RCPCH Clinical Lead for Audit aims to standardise methodology and datasets in common conditions for data collection and analysis, in keeping with agreed national standards of care, to help healthcare professionals conduct their own local / regional projects.
A comprehensive collection of proven quality, service improvement and redesign tools, theories and techniques that can be applied to a wide variety of situations. You can search the collection alphabetically for a specific tool or browse groups of tools using one of four categories – by stage of project, type of task, approach or stage of the patient pathway.
TURAS Learn is NHS Education for Scotland’s platform for learning and support resources. Its Quality Improvement Zone was created by the NHS Education for Scotland Quality Improvement Team and provides information and resources to support people with experience at all levels of quality improvement to develop their knowledge. There are educational resources, including information on the improvement journey, guides, frameworks, and a library of QI tools.
NHS Elect are a national membership organisation staffed by experienced NHS colleagues providing specialist development, coaching and support across 7 key areas of expertise, including QI and measurement. Their website has open-access resources such as webinars, podcasts, templates and presentations on a number of QI topics.
‘Improvement Fundamentals in a Day’ is a toolkit designed to provide all the resources you need to run your own local QI workshop. Based on NHS England’s Improvement Fundamentals online course, there are facilitator videos and step-by-step guidance on each of the QI techniques covered, as well as team exercises and templates.
Target key National Neonatal Audit Programme measures with basic QI tools and methods that are quick to learn and easy to apply. The British Association of Perinatal Medicine QI toolkits aim to provide neonatal teams with the evidence base to facilitate effective interventions by interrogating their own data and processes to undertake quality improvement activities, and assisting them to interpret and monitor the outcomes of their QI activities.
15 seconds 30 minutes (or 15s30m for short) aims to help anyone working in healthcare identify how they could spend a few extra seconds on a task now, which will save someone else 30 minutes or more later on. 15s30m is a change platform that individual staff or patients or whole organisations can use to release the value in every idea. To get started you don’t need a charter or formal plan or programme initiation document; its just individuals being empowered to do what they know is right for staff and patients.
QI networks
If you’re an RCPCH member, join the community today and start gaining QI knowledge, skills and insight to support your work by exchanging experiences with other RCPCH members.
The community is running on Hexitime, a virtual platform that allows direct and group messaging, and time-banking, where you exchange tokens for time.
Whether you’re at the start of your QI journey and want to know the basics, or you’re looking for collaborators or specialist input, this is for you.
Don’t Forget The Bubbles was conceived as a way of sharing collective knowledge in paediatrics and child health. What started out as four enthusiastic paediatricians has grown so much bigger. With over 70 authors, more than 600 blog posts, online modules in common paediatric conditions and x-ray interpretation, more than 100 podcasts, an annual conference and ‘Skin Deep’, a project aiming to improve the diversity in paediatric skin images online.
Q is an initiative connecting people, who have improvement expertise, across the UK and Ireland. Q’s mission is to foster continuous and sustainable improvement in health and care. To achieve this, they are creating opportunities for people to come together and form a community – sharing ideas, enhancing skills and collaborating to make health and care better. The community is approaching 4000 members across the UK and Ireland, made up of diverse range of people including those at the front line of health and social care, patient leaders, managers, researchers, commissioners, policymakers and others.
PIER is a collaboration of multidisciplinary health professionals working to improve the care of children and young people in the South of England through development of regional guidance, delivery of educational initiatives and exciting paediatric research. Their website also shares local examples of innovation, research, guidelines and resources across a wide range of topics.
NeoTRIPs is group of senior paediatricians with a passion for neonatology and improving clinical care through large scale quality improvement projects. Each project receives input from a consultant with specialist interest in that area and a project specific trainee lead. A central committee oversees multiple local hospital teams composed of a local consultant neonatologist, local trainee lead and other paediatric trainees. Together they comprise a dedicated and passionate team spanning multiple regions across the UK.
KQuIP is a dynamic network of kidney health professionals, patients and carers who are committed to developing, supporting and sharing quality improvement in kidney services in order to enhance outcomes and quality of life for patients with kidney disease. It aims to improve the lives of children affected by kidney disease by supporting healthcare professionals, kidney units, renal networks and commissioners across the UK to embed quality improvement into daily practice, understand and reduce unwarranted variation in care, and spread and share good practice.
The Pan-London Paediatric Sepsis Network brings together healthcare professionals and academics from acute, emergency and inpatient paediatric care, from across London and beyond. It aims to address clinical, medical, cultural and social challenges unique to the needs of children at the risk of sepsis.