How Does QI Work?
Quality Improvement – Evidence based.
QI has grown from medical research – this has shown that the frequency of medical accidents can be reduced, and the effectiveness of care enhanced, by using a range of techniques and trainable behaviours. You may already be familiar with some of the concepts – they include:
- Surgical Safety Checklists
- Human Factors
- Significant Event Auditing
- Patient Safety Culture
- Psychological Safety
- Clinical Audit
QI uses these ‘process-improvement tools’ to increase reliability, enhance standards and make the care that care-givers provide even better.
Why is QI a powerful success tool?
It is Cost Efficient
It is focussed on boosting the safety & quality of medical care in a resource-limited environment, rather than identifying problems that require a large investment.
It Encourages Learning
It establishes a cycle of continual improvement in practice that benefits patients, clients and the organisation.
It Minimises Errors
It Works at All Levels
It is about avoiding the smaller mistakes too – QI lowers the administrative burden of errors and improves business efficiency.
It Improves Engagement
An important element of QI is the open discussion of accidents, as well as innovative ideas – this not only drives improvement but, research shows, staff engagement scores and retention rates.
What is the relationship between QI and staff engagement in the veterinary profession?
QI is focussed on making improvements to veterinary care. One of the ways this is done is by having conversations about error and adverse events in practice, so that learning can happen – our research showed just how difficult veterinarians and nurses sometimes find this.
Over time a QI strategy embeds this type of dialogue in practice routine however, and changes the team’s response to mistakes. As a result improvement becomes as natural as any other aspect of work.
As employees start to feel safe talking about accidents - providing feedback, and receiving it – and getting involved in the way care is delivered, they experience greater engagement too. We call this the Quality-Engagement Cycle.
Quality
Improvement
Trusting conversations
Staff Engagement
Discussion about accidents & care quality
Trusting conversations
Purposefully Designed
At VetQIT we have combined our own research into QI in the veterinary profession, with real-world experience of veterinary care, to develop the VetQIT training program.
QI education designed to work for you.
Want to Learn More?
We are committed to helping organisations in the veterinary industry benefit from Veterinary Quality Improvement.
Please contact VetQIT to discuss your requirements.