Improving Healthcare: A Handbook for Practitioners

Good intentions to do our best in healthcare are not enough. Healthcare professionals need to know how to close the gap between best evidence and practice, by understanding and applying quality improvement principles and processes. Improving Healthcare is a practical guide, providing healthcare staff with the knowledge and skills that enable them to implement, evaluate and disseminate a quality improvement project in their own workplace. With a comprehensive coverage, chapters cover the history, selection and application of quality improvement philosophies and methods in clinical healthcare at team, unit, organisational and system levels. The book also considers social processes of implementation as well as technical aspects of measuring and improving quality. As an essential guide for healthcare practitioners at any level who are new to service improvement, Improving Healthcare includes practical examples and case studies of healthcare improvements that illustrate the concepts discussed.