REFLECTIONS ON EVOLVING CHANGE.

Physician leadership is increasingly recognized as pivotal for improved change in health care. Multi-professional care teams, education and leadership are evolving trends that are important for health care's future.

Advancing the science of patient safety.

Despite a decade's worth of effort, patient safety has improved slowly, in part because of the limited evidence base for the development and widespread dissemination of successful patient safety practices. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality sponsored an international group of experts in patient safety and evaluation methods to develop criteria to improve the design, evaluation, and reporting of practice research in patient safety. This article reports the findings and recommendations of this group, which include greater use of theory and logic models, more detailed descriptions of interventions and their implementation, enhanced explanation of desired and unintended outcomes, and better description and measurement of context and of how context influences interventions.

Blueprint for action: steps toward a high-quality, high-value maternity care system.

Childbirth Connection hosted a 90th Anniversary national policy symposium, Transforming Maternity Care: A High Value Proposition, on April 3, 2009, in Washington, DC. Over 100 leaders from across the range of stakeholder perspectives were actively engaged in the symposium work to improve the quality and value of U.S.

Leading in crisis: lessons for safety leaders.

Objective: The National Quality Forum (NQF) Safe Practices are a group of 34 evidence-based Safe Practices that should be universally used to reduce the risk of harm to patients. Four of these practices specifically address leadership. A recently published book, 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis, offers practical advice on how to lead in crisis.