Constancy of purpose for improving patient safety — Missing in action (Don Berwick, 12 January 2023)

Summary

The 20th-century statistician and quality scholar W. Edwards Deming proposed the “14 Points for Top Leaders” — a checklist of management principles for executives who wish to nurture improvement in complex systems. First on his list was “constancy of purpose for improvement.” In Deming’s view, when leaders slacken their visible commitment to a goal, progress slows or stalls. Donald Berwick discusses in this New England Journal of Medicine Editorial.