The cluster randomised trial (CRT) is commonly used in healthcare research. It is the gold-standard study design for evaluating healthcare policy interventions. A key characteristic of this design is ...

Effective improvement and research rely on sustained multidisciplinary collaboration, but few examples are available of centres with the broad range of disciplines and practical experience that are ...

Introduction Quality improvement (QI) efforts are critical to promoting health equity and mitigating disparities in healthcare outcomes. Equity-focused QI (EF-QI) interventions address the unique ...

Administrative data are readily available, inexpensive, computer readable, and cover large populations. Despite coding irregularities and limited clinical details, administrative data supplemented by ...

Background Although well-established principles exist for improving the timeliness and efficiency of care, many organisations struggle to achieve more than small-scale, localised gains. Where care ...

Healthcare workers could learn much from the engineering and civil aviation industries about safety management. The medical community is becoming more open to learning safety lessons from other ...

The methods of evaluating change and improvement strategies are not well described. The design and conduct of a range of experimental and non-experimental quantitative designs are considered. Such ...

Medical errors continue to occur despite multiple strategies devised for their prevention. Although many safety initiatives lead to improvement, they are often short lived and unsustainable. Our goal ...

Background Incident reporting is a promising tool to enhance patient safety, but few empirical studies have been conducted to identify factors that increase the number of incident reports. Objective ...

Results UK doctors were more likely to have developed practice guidelines (82.8% UK vs 49.6% US, p<0.001) and to have taken part in a formal medical error-reduction programme (70.9% UK vs 55.7% US, ...

Quality improvement initiatives can become bogged down by excessive data collection. Sometimes the question arises—are we doing an adequate job with respect to a recommended practice? Are we complying ...

CDS-Dx work The report by Sibbald et al published in this issue of BMJ Quality & Safety adds to the growing evidence that decision support can improve the diagnostic process. 4 This study was ...