Our health and care system is facing major challenges, with the need to improve at significant scale and pace in the face of considerable financial pressures.

Q was established in 2015 in response to a recommendation from Don Berwick’s 2013 report to urgently enhance the ‘bottom up’ capacity of the health and care system.

Improvement is happening in pockets around the UK and Ireland, but a better-connected approach is needed. Enhancing the ability of the system to surface and make the most of successful ideas is essential.

Thousands of people in health and care have been trained in, and are now delivering, structured approaches to improvement. It is hoped that through Q’s diverse and well-connected community the spread of innovation will be encouraged.

Q began as an initiative to recruit ‘5,000 Safety Fellows’ following a recommendation in the widely respected 2013 Berwick report.

The report made the case for a system devoted to continual learning and improvement. And recognising people with improvement expertise was one of the key recommendations on how best to improve safety in the wake of the failings of care at Mid-Staffordshire Hospitals NHS Trust.

In 2014 NHS England approached the Health Foundation to lead the design and delivery of the initiative. The Health Foundation’s UK-wide remit and funding means the initiative can bring together those committed to health and care quality across all four countries in the UK.

The decision was also made to expand beyond patient safety to cover all domains of quality in line with the Institute of Medicine’s definition of quality: safe, effective, patient-centred, timely, efficient and equitable.

In 2020, Q launched in Ireland.

To ensure it meets the needs of those in the community, Q was co-designed with 231 founding cohort members in 2015. We also involved leaders of improvement and wider stakeholders in the design (more than 500 people in total to date). We continue to involve members in the ongoing design of Q, its offers and its activities.

Q is led by the Health Foundation and supported by partners across the UK and Ireland: NHS England and Improvement, Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Improvement Cymru, Public Health Agency Northern Ireland, Health Service Executive Ireland.

It was previously co-funded by NHS England. On 1 April 2016, the Patient Safety team transferred to NHS Improvement, along with co-funding commitments to Q.

Q supports the promotion of improvement within the health and care system, encouraging and connecting a wide range of people to effectively lead improvement. Although members are expected to develop their own learning and skills, it is also hoped they will use this input to lead and develop others beyond Q – building capacity across the system.

The Q Lab allows people from across the UK and Ireland to collaborate on improvement challenges, making it easier to pool knowledge and energy to enable faster and more sustainable progress on cross-system and complex issues. Find out more.

Q’s mission is to deliver tangible improvements for and with patients, and patient leaders make up an important segment of our membership. We describe patient leaders as people who combine commitment, understanding and experience of improvement with their perspective as a patient or carer, or as a leader within an organisation that represents patient or public perspectives.

Q is a community, not a taught course. It is intended to complement and underpin other initiatives, networks and programmes, rather than to compete with them. Q is aimed at individuals and provides a long-term infrastructure to support them throughout their improvement career.

Q aims to support other initiatives and programmes by:

• making it easier to understand what improvement work is being done, by whom, and where
• providing resources and platforms to connect and support across existing networks
• making it easier to collaborate on areas of shared interest
• influencing the context of improvement

Q and Generation Q are separate initiatives led by the Health Foundation. While Q is a membership community made up of thousands of people working in improvement, Generation Q is a funded leadership and quality improvement programme.

The Generation Q fellowship gives participants the opportunity to gain a postgraduate certificate in leadership from Ashridge Executive Education at Hult International Business School. Find out more.

Members will join a diverse community of people committed to and passionate about improvement – a home to turn to for inspiration and support. Q provides ways for members to learn, share and support each other from a wider network of peers. The community is designed to help support busy people with their current improvement work and ongoing development, and to promote their visibility as leaders of improvement.

Connections and collaborations made within Q play an important role in making the community so valuable, and the membership offers are designed to support this. Some of the exclusive benefits available to members are:

• networking opportunities
• direct access to over 4000 fellow members through the online member directory
• free events, masterclasses, visits and talks
• subscriptions to journals and learning resources 
• a platform to share news/blogs/events through the Q website and access to members’ only content

Opportunities to join Q are currently open on an ongoing basis. We welcome applications from people with commitment to improving health and care based anywhere in the UK and Ireland.

Find out more about joining.

We worked together with a founding cohort of 231 members and others to co-design the membership journey for Q. During this process it was decided that anyone wanting to join Q should complete a simple application in which they could reflect on their knowledge of and commitment to improving health and care.

There is no membership fee or minimum time commitment, and members are given free access to a variety of exclusive benefits.

We recognise the financial barriers that may make it difficult for patient and public voice (PPV) members to take time out for Q. Therefore, we will reimburse out-of-pocket expenses for PPV members to attend Q activities, online or in person. This will be clearly communicated by the Q team, but do also check with them which expenses will be covered for an activity before you make any payments. Please read the full expense policy or contact the Q team for more details.

Read the full Q Expense Policy.

There are occasions when we will cover the travel and out of pocket expenses for activities for those not in paid employment. This will need to be pre-approved and in line with the Health Foundation expenses policy. Please contact the Q team directly in advance.

Read the full Q Expense Policy