Continuous self improvement to reduce stress levels: developing an individualized model of health

Personal quality improvement applies quality improvement tools and thinking to help a person improve some aspect of his or her personal life. A workbook has been developed and this approach has been used to teach health professions students about both quality improvement and the difficulties of changing health-related habits. This article describes how an interactive process was used to create and test a statistical model of her stress and its variation using correlations and a regression equation. The results of this process include a unique personal quantitative stress model that was developed and tested. Of the 16 variables, only two were correlated with the student's stress and the regression model showed that 20% of the variance in stress could be explained. This general approach could be applied to other health conditions such as diabetes and hypertension. However, the approach is now costly in terms of statistical consultation and if it is ever to find wide application, it must be automated.