Improving reliability of clinical care practices for ventilated patients in the context of a patient safety improvement initiative.

Aims: To investigate perceived factors relating to the reliable application of four clinical care practices targeting ventilator-associated pneumonias, in the context of a patient safety improvement initiative called the Safer Patients Initiative (SPI).

Methods: Qualitative case study. Seventeen semi-structured individual interviews with clinical operational leads, programme coordinators and executive managers who were involved in the implementation of the programme's critical care work stream during its pilot phase.

The disparity of frontline clinical staff and managers' perceptions of a quality and patient safety initiative.

Rationale, Aims And Objectives: Arguably, a shared perspective between managers and their clinical staff on an improvement initiative would allow for most effective implementation and increase programme success. However, it has been reported that research has failed to differentiate between managers and line employees on quality management implementation and examine their differences in perceptions of quality and safety initiatives. The aim of this study was to compare clinical frontline staff and senior managers' perceptions on the importance of an organization-wide quality and safety collaborative: the Safer Patients Initiative (SPI).

Medical engagement in organisation-wide safety and quality-improvement programmes: experience in the UK Safer Patients Initiative.

Objectives: To identify factors affecting doctors' engagement with the Safer Patients Initiative (SPI).

Design: Qualitative interview study.

Setting: Four organisations participating in phase 1 of the SPI programme, from four different geographical locations in the UK.

Organisational readiness: exploring the preconditions for success in organisation-wide patient safety improvement programmes.

Background: Patient safety has been high on the agenda for more than a decade. Despite many national initiatives aimed at improving patient safety, the challenge remains to find coherent and sustainable organisation-wide safety-improvement programmes. In the UK, the Safer Patients' Initiative (SPI) was established to address this challenge.

Studying large-scale programmes to improve patient safety in whole care systems: challenges for research.

Large-scale national and multi-institutional patient safety improvement programmes are being developed in the health care systems of several countries to address problems in the reliability of care delivered to patients. Drawing upon popular collaborative improvement models, these campaigns are ambitious in their aims to improve patient safety in macro-level systems such as whole health care organisations. This article considers the methodological issues involved in conducting research and evaluation of these programmes.

Perceptions of the impact of a large-scale collaborative improvement programme: experience in the UK Safer Patients Initiative.

Rationale And Aims: In several countries, collaborative improvement programmes involving multiple health care organizations have been developed to address the issue of patient safety and reliability of care at an organization-wide level. In the UK, the Health Foundation's Safer Patients Initiative (SPI) was developed to achieve breakthrough improvement in the quality and safety of care in 24 acute hospital Trusts between 2004 and 2008. Research evidence for the effectiveness of programmes of this type and the mechanisms by which positive outcomes are achieved remains limited.