Our open-access series brings together critical evidence-based overviews of a diverse range of healthcare improvement approaches.
Explore the series
Values and Ethics
Alan Cribb, Vikki Entwistle, Polly Mitchell
This Element demonstrates the ethical considerations and values that underpin both the goals of healthcare improvement and how improvement work is undertaken.
Statistical Process Control
Mohammed Amin Mohammed
This Element describes statistical process control methodology, shares case studies to illustrate its application in healthcare, and provides critiques and reflections on its current use and future role in healthcare.
Approaches to Spread, Scale-Up and Sustainability
Chrysanthi Papoutsi, Trisha Greenhalgh, Sonja Marjanovic
Examines various approaches to spreading, scaling-up, and sustaining improvements in healthcare, noting their strengths and limitations. It shares case studies to highlight how different ways of viewing spread and scale-up can make a difference in practice.
Health Economics
Andrew Street, Nils Gutacker
Looks at economic approaches that can be used to encourage improvement in healthcare, and explores how economic evaluation can be used to compare the costs and benefits of using healthcare resources in alternative ways.
Governance and Leadership
Naomi Fulop, Angus Ramsey
Analyses evidence on how governance and leadership influence quality and safety in healthcare at different levels in the health system, and shows how different leadership approaches may contribute to delivering system change.
Simulation as an Improvement Technique
Victoria Brazil, Eve Purdy, Kamal Bajaj
Reviews the role of simulation as a rapidly emerging tool in improving quality and safety in healthcare, including its current use, potential applications, and challenges.
Reducing Overuse
Caroline Cupit, Carolyn Tarrant, Natalie Armstrong
Examines the successes, promising approaches and challenges in generating and using evidence about overuse, a major issue of healthcare quality, safety and sustainability.
Workplace Conditions
Jill Maben, Jane Ball, Amy C Edmondson
Reviews the evidence for the workplace conditions that are essential for improvement: the right number of staff and skills, psychological safety, and staff wellbeing.
Operational Research Approaches
Martin Utley, Sonya Crowe, Christina Pagel
Discover key concepts and common approaches in operational research and explore its potential to help analyse and improve healthcare services.
Making Culture Change Happen
Russell Mannion
Examines the evidence for linking organisational culture to healthcare quality and performance.
Implementation Science
Paul Wilson, Roman Kislov
Critically explores the theories and strategies of implementation science, and how they are or could be applied in practice.
The Positive Deviance Approach
Ruth Baxter, Rebecca Lawton
The potential of positive deviance is largely untapped. Discover how to identify those who demonstrate exceptional performance and investigate how they achieve it.
Co-Producing and Co-Designing
Glenn Robert, Louise Locock, Oli Williams, Jocelyn Cornwell, Sara Donetto, Joanna Goodrich
Examines the origins and development of co-production and co-design, their application in healthcare, and the opportunities and challenges.
Collaboration-Based Approaches
Graham Martin, Mary Dixon-Woods
Explores the evidence for collaboration-based approaches to improving healthcare, illustrated by examples and with guidance on the key challenges involved.
Watch the Elements videos
Everything you would expect from THIS
Covering a wide range of approaches, including models, techniques, major tools and methods, organising structures and strategies.
Sets out the evidence for how each approach has been used and to what effect, but without advocating for the approach or acting as a how-to guide.
Written by over 60 academic and clinical experts in healthcare improvement from over 40 organisations in the UK, Canada, France, Australia, and the USA.
Thorough editorial and peer-review process to ensure the content is accurate, accessible, and engaging.
Freely available online (under a CC-BY-NC-ND licence).