Quality improvement

Overview and objectives

Overview

Harm from healthcare delivery may occur despite the dedication, training, and professionalism of healthcare providers. An important part of a "just culture of patient safety" is learning from adverse events and near misses.

Physicians have a long history of improving the care and clinical outcomes of their patients. The role of "Manager" in CanMEDS and CanMEDS-FM includes quality assurance and improvement — a physician is to contribute to the effectiveness of their practice, and the system and processes of healthcare delivery.

In your career as a physician, you will likely lead or participate in projects to improve quality and safety.

Objectives

After completing this topic you will be able to:

• Define common terms and list two approaches for quality improvement.
• Describe in general terms the Canadian legal framework for reviewing and learning from unexpected patient outcomes and adverse events (accidents in Québec).