COVID-19: patient safety and quality improvement skills to deploy during the surge

Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly challenged many healthcare systems. To respond to the crisis, these systems have had to reorganise instantly, with little time to reflect on the roles to assign to their patient safety (PS) and quality improvement (QI) experts. In many cases, staff who had a background in clinical care was called to support wards and critical care. Others were deemed “non-essential” and sent back to work from home, while their programmes were placed in hibernation mode. This has meant that many QI and PS experts with skills to offer in their field have ended up carrying out tasks unrelated to the current crisis.

Content

Vincent et al. believe that the skillset of patient safety and quality improvement personnel is essential for the successful implementation of the changes required to achieve the desired outcomes. An understanding of systems theory and the complexity of healthcare systems, human factors and reliability theories, and change methodologies is key to the success of any transformation programme.

In their paper in the International Journal for Quality in Healthcare, they propose a five-step strategy and actions through which PS and QI staff can meaningfully contribute during a pandemic by employing their core skills to support patients, staff and organisations.