Why culture is king

Developing a QI culture 

The King’s Fund has identified key enablers to embed a culture of quality improvement. These include:  

• Developing and maintaining a new approach to leadership 
• Allocating adequate time and resources 
• Ensuring a continuous focus on the patient 
• Being consistent in the application of QI tools and methodologies 
• Maintaining employee engagement. 

Cultivating these foundational elements is key to evolving from implementing discrete QI activities to complete infusion of QI into your culture. Leadership and management practices have a significant impact upon quality and a commitment to quality improvement is linked to higher quality care. 

To make this as simple as possible, let’s consider how you as an engaging leader can promote a culture of continuous improvement: 

• Create a visible focus on quality every day – lead by example
• Explain clearly what you are trying to achieve. Have a clear vision and objectives so everyone understands what you are doing and why, and the role each team member is expected to play
• Consistently request ideas for improvement and respond quickly to those ideas
• Manage change and challenges to continuous quality improvement 
• Encourage root cause analysis to get to the core of any problems
• Empower staff to make daily continuous improvements as part of their work
• Emphasise measurement in quality – celebrate and share the results achieved through continuous improvement
• Display storyboards to demonstrate success.

You may need to reconsider your leadership style. Many of us are used to problem-solving on a daily basis, rather than thinking ahead about how to enable lasting change.

An engaged leader displays humility – they recognise the scope to improve on current processes without being defensive. They are also passionate and persistent in the face of setbacks, understanding that creating a QI culture takes time and sustained effort.