Strand 9. Creating an infrastructure to support learning and quality improvement
It is the way people are trained – there is too much of ‘we are in charge’ and it is therefore what we are doing to you rather than with you." Service provider
Being able to test small changes in health care practice can help to engage nursing teams in improvement activity, while monitoring outcomes, through improvement data, can help those teams to identify and evaluate improvements in both patient and staff experiences.
From Observation to Intervention reflects the need for the promotion of continuous improvement and discussion of this at all levels to support the creation of a learning and development culture.
Putting guidance into practice
NHS Boards should systematically seek and review feedback from both staff and service users across a range of issues – for example, service users’ experiences of care and treatment and both service users’ and staff’s perceptions of safety.
Ward staff should
- set aims and objectives for improvements to patient experience and gather data to identify whether tests of change are effective in achieving these aims
- use the driver diagram and change package that accompany this guidance to test and monitor improvements in practice
- discuss learning from data to facilitate an understanding of the context of any improvement activity and use this learning to stimulate further tests or the spread of change and improvement