Beyond improvement skills: what do clinicians, managers, patients and others need to do to make improvement happen?

In this issue of the journal, Wright et al offer an in-depth examination of the implementation of six improvement projects in three English hospitals to elucidate the work that matters most to those directly involved. The framework they inductively derive from their analysis—a set of ‘socio-organisational functional and facilitative tasks’, or SOFFTs—gives substance to the activities undertaken by practitioners at the sharp end of improvement projects, beyond the technical skills involved in delivering quality improvement methods.1 The notion that this class of activity may be important to the success of improvement work is not new: previous researchers, the authors of this study among them, have drawn attention to the range of organising activities that are central to success or failure of improvement efforts, for example, in engaging colleagues and ensuring fit with organisational processes, structures and culture.2–5 Research in...
Source: Quality and Safety in Health Care - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Editorials Source Type: research