Gains from Quality Improvement Initiatives - Experience from a Tertiary-care Institute in India

Quality improvement (QI) in healthcare involves implementing small iterative changes by a team of people using a simple structured framework to resolve problems, improve systems, and to improve patient outcomes. These efforts are especially important in a resource-limited setting where infrastructure, staff and funds are meagre. The concept of QI often appears complex to a new careprovider who feels intimidated to participate in change activities. In this article, we describe our experience with QI activities to address various issues in the Neonatal intensive care unit. QI efforts resulted in improved patient outcomes, and motivated careproviders. QI is a continuous activity and can be done easily if the team is willing to learn from their experiences and use those lessons to adapt, adopt or abandon changes, and improve further. Our institute has also developed Point of Care Quality Improvement (POCQI), a free online resource for learning the science of QI, and also serves as a platform for sharing QI work.