Over the last six months, Joy Furnival and I have had the privilege of hosting four webinars for the Q community on Quality Management Systems (QMS). Initially, we anticipated a small audience of around 30 people, but we have been over-whelmed by the interest shown – over 500 people attended from all around the world, both Q members and non-members. Clearly this was a topic that people wanted to understand and talk about!
Our initial proposal was to offer people an overview of the three elements of quality management – quality planning, quality control and quality improvement. As interest grew, we responded by developing a series of webinars that each did a deep dive into how health care organisations have applied QMS to their own organisational challenges.
Increasingly, health care organisations are realising that improvement needs to be an essential component of how they work. All too often, hard-won improvements are implemented, then lost, as the focus shifts to other priorities and there is a backwards slide to the old ways of doing things (see Related Links).
Increasingly, health care organisations are realising that improvement needs to be an essential component of how they work.
At our webinars, we heard from a range of experts in quality management from a diverse mix of organisations in health, academia, and the private sector. Each speaker gave us insights into how both technical (or structural) and relational (or cultural) approaches were needed to develop the conditions for sustainable improvement.
We were delighted to hear from members and non-members through lively breakout sessions and our panel interviews about how their own organisations were approaching quality management.
Dr Amar Shah, Chief Quality Officer at East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT), spoke at the first webinar where he reflected on the ten-year journey ELFT has been on as it has developed its approach to quality management. Dr Shah emphasised the need to support teams to understand the purpose of what they are doing and what it is they are improving:
‘I wouldn’t say to start by trying to design and implement a perfect quality management system. Better to start with an approach that allows gradual improvement over time because understanding and maturity are key to bringing a quality improvement approach into all areas of the organisation.’
Our most lively discussions, however, were those around leadership and leaders; how can they help create a culture where improvement can happen at every level? David Fillingham, ex Chief Executive of AQUA & Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, summarised the challenge:
‘If we are going to really create an improvement culture, we are going to have to fundamentally change the way we lead our health care organisations and systems.’
This winter we will host a set of events to delve deeper into how we improve across systems and populations, how we build coaching alongside daily continuous improvement, and how we design better health care around the people who use it. Details of these events will be shared on the Q website over the next few weeks.
This winter we will host a set of events to delve deeper into how we improve across systems & populations, how we build coaching alongside daily continuous improvement, and how we design better health care around the people who use it.
We encourage you to join these conversations, to share your own organisation’s approaches, learn from others, and develop new ideas.