BACKGROUND It is increasingly recognised that patients can play a role in reporting safety incidents. Studies have tended to focus on patients within hospital settings, and on the reporting of patient safety incidents as defined within a medical model of safety. This study aims to determine the feasibility of collecting and using patient experiences of safety as a proactive approach to identify...

Quality improvement involves bringing about change to enhance the effectiveness, safety and patient experience of healthcare. Change is predicated on learning, and this requires flows of information and interactions between networks of people, groups or organisations. The nature of these interactions is an important part of the context of quality improvement. 1,2 The scientific study of network...

BACKGROUND By means of the ICONAS project, the Healthcare Agency of an Italian Region developed, and used a standardised questionnaire to quantify the organisational climate. The aims of the project were (a) to investigate whether the healthcare institutions were interested in measuring climate, (b) to estimate the range of applicability and reliability of the instrument, (c) to analyse the dim...

In an effort to improve operational efficiency, healthcare services around the world have adopted process improvement methodologies from the manufacturing sector, such as Lean Production. In this paper we report on four multi-level case studies of the implementation of Lean in the English NHS. Our results show that this generally involves the application of specific Lean 'tools', such as 'kaize...

In an effort to improve operational efficiency, healthcare services around the world have adopted process improvement methodologies from the manufacturing sector, such as Lean Production. In this paper we report on four multi-level case studies of the implementation of Lean in the English NHS. Our results show that this generally involves the application of specific Lean ‘tools’, such as ‘kaize...

In an effort to improve operational efficiency, healthcare services around the world have adopted process improvement methodologies from the manufacturing sector, such as Lean Production. In this paper we report on four multi-level case studies of the implementation of Lean in the English NHS. Our results show that this generally involves the application of specific Lean ‘tools’, such as ‘kaize...

background many organisations have realised the importance of human resource for their competitive advantage. empowering employees is therefore essential for organisational effectiveness. this study aimed to investigate the relationship between employee participation with outcome variables such as organisational commitment, job satisfaction, perception of justice in an organisation and readines...

OBJECTIVE To determine the relationship between psychological empowerment and readiness for organisational change among primary healthcare workers in Iran. METHODS This descriptive-analytical cross-sectional study comprised 64 primary health workers in Noorabad, western Iran, and was conducted in 2012. A multi-stage cluster sampling was used for the study. Information was collected using two ...

Traditional approaches to disseminating research findings have failed to achieve optimal healthcare. In a systematic review of 235 studies of guideline dissemination and implementation strategies, we observed the following: there was a median 10% improvement across studies, suggesting that it is possible to change healthcare provider behaviour and improve quality of care; most dissemination and...

Measurement of quality and safety has an important role in improving healthcare, but is susceptible to unintended consequences. One frequently made argument is that optimising the benefits from measurement requires controlling the risks of blame, but whether it is possible to do this remains unclear. We examined responses to a programme known as the NHS Safety Thermometer (NHS-ST). Measuring fo...