Researchers have released a new guide on how to establish and lead a quality improvement collaborative (QIC) to support senior healthcare professionals, managers and leaders across healthcare settings who are seeking to improve medication management practices.
A QIC uses an evidenced based approach to bring healthcare professionals together from different sites to learn, share and implement best practice in a measurable and sustainable way. QICs have successfully been used in a range of different fields and settings to improve the quality of healthcare.
Quality improvement strengthens health systems to deliver high quality person-centred care, improve processes for staff and implement evidence into practice.
The guide, Improving medication management together: a practical guide to establishing and leading a quality improvement collaborative, developed by researchers from The Centre for Medicine Use and Safety (CMUS) within the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) and Flinders University, aims to provide tools and simple steps for running a QIC.
Professor Simon Bell, CMUS Director, said: “Quality improvement collaboratives go beyond just bringing people together.”
“They provide a structured way for healthcare teams to implement changes, use data to track their progress, and learn from others on what works in practice. This helps healthcare teams to move from ideas to measurable improvement.”
Professor Kate Laver, from the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University said the guide can be used to establish a QIC across a number of different settings and practice areas.
“For example, this guide could be used by an aged care organisation who would like to lead quality improvement activities across multiple sites, or a healthcare professional organisation or a primary health network that would like to bring teams together from various sites and organisations to improve practice,” Professor Laver said.
To access the guide, Improving medication management together: a practical guide to establishing and leading a
quality improvement collaborative, click here
