If you have an exact title add ti= (eg. ti=Emergency Medicine)
After testing and implementing changes aimed at improvement, focus turns to maintaining the improvements which have been achieved, spreading and scaling these improvements to other relevant areas, and reporting on the results.
Sustainability in QI
NHS Sustainability Model
The NHS Sustainability Model (pictured below) consists of 10 factors relating to process, staff, and organisational issues which contribute to sustaining change. Read more in the NHS Sustainability Model and Guide (2010).
Recommended resources
Quality Improvement Spreading and Sustaining (2 mins 37 secs)
This short clip from Dorset HealthCare (an NHS Trust) shares quick tips on sustaining the results of your QI project and spreading to other areas.
IHI Open School: Is there a secret to sustaining improvements? (1 min 47 secs)
Dr David M. Williams discusses sustainability from the perspective of ongoing quality control, which may involve small adjustments to maintain improvements.
Spreading vs scaling up
Can your project be scaled up?
Health Innovation West of England has created a Scalability Assessment Tool (SAT) Checklist based on the theory of Diffusion of Innovation originally developed by Everett Rogers. Although it has been created for the NHS, the categories it covers -- such as relevance, relative advantage, and funding -- are applicable to other settings.
Scalability Assessment Tool (SAT) Checklist
Recommended resources
Stanford Medicine - Spreading Improvements (14 mins 58 secs)
A/Prof David B. Larson, from the Stanford Department of Radiology, discusses how to spread improvements via a 'spread project'.
Publishing & presenting your project
Quality improvement (QI) projects may be written up and published as a journal article or presented at conferences.
Note: Ensure that your publishing plan is consistent with any documents that you may have submitted to the Research office under the Quality Assurance and Negligible Risk Projects pathway.
SQUIRE Guidelines
The SQUIRE Guidelines -- Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence -- provide a framework for high-quality reporting of QI projects. The checklist (Table 1) describes aspects of your project that you should cover in your report/article, such as the local problem and methods of evaluation.
Note: In addition to the overarching SQUIRE Guidelines, different journals may have their own submission requirements for QI articles. For example, see the submission guidelines for quality improvement reports submitted to BMJ Open Quality. This journal also requires authors to use their downloadable SQUIRE template to submit a report.
Guidance on publishing & conference posters
Visit our Writing, Referencing & Publishing Guide for general guidance on writing for publication, choosing a journal, copyright, and more.
Writing, Referencing & Publishing Guide
Monash Health employees can request a report on recommended journals for publishing, based on your field and the topic of your manuscript.
Recommended journals for publishing report
For guidance on preparing a conference poster -- including downloadable Monash Health-branded conference poster templates -- visit our page on Conference Posters & Visual Abstracts.
Conference Posters & Visual Abstracts
Additional resources
The following articles offer guidance on writing up your QI project:
Tip: It can be helpful to read other published QI reports, e.g. those in the BMJ Open Quality journal.
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