It is often said that an organisation is only as strong as the people within it, and nothing could be truer for the Health Foundation’s Q community.

With more than 5,000 members across the UK and Ireland in various quality and improvement roles in the health and care sector, Q’s growth and success during the past seven years is purely down to the experience and knowledge of its members.

Set up in 2016 to provide a space for people working to improve health and care to connect, learn and share, it has become a hub of innovation and insight, where members work together to solve challenges in a safe, honest and equal space.

Accelerating the pace of change across a variety of organisations, health and care leaders are now seeing Q as a direct route to improvement and successful outcomes. They appreciate that learning around improvement is not just about improvement methodologies but also about culture and leadership and how to work with others.

Learning from others is key to improvement

Stacey Lally, Q’s Deputy Director, said that with quality and improvement increasingly coming into focus, it’s vital that people take the opportunity to collaborate.

‘When we first formed Q, there were pockets of improvement and change happening across the UK and Ireland, but none of those dots were joined up.

‘People in health and care were experiencing similar problems, but there was nowhere for people to come together to share learning, thinking and ideas.

‘Sharing knowledge and evidence is vital to solving issues. That was a key driver in setting up Q, and it still is today. But, as we have grown, I think enabling people to learn, develop their skills and collaborate has also become a key focus.’

Q has something to offer everyone

Through a range of research programmes, activities, and Special Interest Groups (SIGs), Q offers members the opportunity for individual learning, enabling them to take knowledge back into their organisations to help solve challenges, improve best practice, and support change.

Whether the challenge is broad, such as reducing delays and wait times for patients, or more relevant to a particular cohort, such as those working in mental health, Q works with members to facilitate programmes that meet their needs.

During COVID-19, Q was able to demonstrate its value by enabling people from across the UK and Ireland to come together remotely to discuss their challenges in an ever-changing, difficult environment. Some 900 people took part in six Rapid Learning sessions, enabling them to learn from the innovation and improvement that was taking place during the height of the pandemic.

As the community evolves, there are a range of programmes to aid learning, from Q Visits, where members spend time in another organisation to learn and experience different ways of working, to Q Labs, which bring a range of people together to collaborate on a widespread and complex challenge over the course of several months.

However, members believe one of the greatest assets of Q is simply the ability it gives them to contact peers on the platform and to meet, as ‘there is always somebody who can answer your question and offer insight or advice.’

Evolving to meet the needs of members

‘When we first started, we wanted to understand the needs of people working in improvement and help to facilitate a way for them to meet, share and learn,’ said Stacey. ‘However, the challenge was in the diversity of people and roles, from policymakers, those in innovation, and medics.

‘We realised that people wanted all kinds of support and help, so we just started to build Q gradually. As we have grown and evolved, we have expanded our offer.

‘Members own the events and the SIGs, we just help to facilitate them and provide the space and culture for members to come together in an open, honest and safe space, where every voice is valid.’

Consultant paediatrician Hesham Abdallah, who is Head of Quality Improvement at Oxford University Hospitals, joined Q because he believes improvement begins with self-improvement.

‘What is so good about the Q community is that it enables you to meet with like-minded individuals who have very different experiences and perspectives, but who have a similar kind of mission to improve health and care,’ said Hesham.

‘Our diversity is a strength. We can really drill down into what others are doing, which we can learn from and take away to hopefully make a difference to what we are trying to achieve.

‘To get different outcomes, you need to do things differently and I think that’s what the Q community brings. It gives us the opportunity to experiment, test out different approaches, and be different in how we can improve services.’

 Tegid Rhys Williams, a Service Improvement Manager at Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board in North Wales, was the 5,000th member to join Q when he signed up in 2022.

As someone relatively new to the health service, he said his main driver for joining was to engage and learn from others.

‘I found people openly and enthusiastically providing a wealth of their experience and knowledge,’ said Tegid. ‘I’ve found it inspiring. My hope is that I can start to engage, share, and provide my own insights in time as I gain knowledge and experience.’

Stacey said while members did have to invest time in Q, she said that effort would be saved several times over in the long-term.

‘You get out of Q what you put in, but it’s definitely a case of investing now to save later,’ she said.

‘Q offers such a wide breadth of support – it will not all be relevant to you – but it does have something for everyone, and it does offer something for every organisation.

‘It has a top down, bottom-up approach, working at a system level with improvement leaders, through the different layers of organisations. We are also working in partnership with other organisations, such as NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation.

‘We are playing a part across the health and care sector by enabling those connections and creating conditions where improvement can thrive. If people working in improvement have not joined Q yet, we encourage them to take that step. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose.’

Join the Q community

If you’re interested in joining the Q community, visit the Join Q page to find out more about the benefits of becoming a member or start your application.

Related links

Browse the Special Interest Groups

Read more about Q Visits

See what’s coming up on the events calendar

Learn more about our partnerships with NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation