Quality improvement in health care: how to do it

This article outlines the steps to success in quality improvement and explains how quality improvement can help you, your patients and your institution. Although many tactics can be used to drive quality improvement, some tactics deliver results that are short term and unsustainable and that fail to embed a culture of quality improvement within organizations. Consensus is emerging that a bottom-up approach may be better - where the intrinsic motivations of clinical staff are harnessed to drive quality improvement. This is an ideal opportunity for clinical staff at all levels to join in. The steps involved in quality improvement include choosing a topic, choosing tools to measure the problem, using plan, do, study, act cycles to drive improvement, and then writing up and sharing the project. Quality improvement projects can achieve multiple outcomes including improved patient experience and saved costs.