Planning & Dissemination of Quality Improvement Activities

Quality improvement projects (QIPs) are initiatives that can help reduce errors, improve processes, lessen waste, improve clinical practice, and improve patient outcomes in healthcare facilities. While quality improvement is necessary for improving patient care and increasing health care value, it does not come without challenges. To address the need for a more standardized method of QIP planning and reporting, several researchers and improvement scholars developed a set of guidelines to guide improvers in planning and reporting the results of their QIPs.  These guidelines, called SQUIRE 2.0 (Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence), are now considered the gold standard for what to report and how to report interventions from a formal QIP.

This qualitative study, guided by the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) and the Integrated-Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (i-PARIHS) Framework, sought to further understand the decision-making process of QI specialists when planning and reporting QIPs and to identify barriers and enablers to implementing the SQUIRE 2.0 guidelines in practice.  Data from 12 semi-structured interviews with QI specialists across North America was analyzed via an inductive-deductive approach, and 7 themes were identified. Findings from this research suggest that the decision-making of QI specialists is greatly dependent on organizational context, barriers to implementation of the guidelines are both behavioral and contextual in nature, and finally, promotion of the SQUIRE 2.0 guidelines must occur from various stakeholders – both internal and external to the organization.