Improvement is about continually working together to improve the experience and outcomes for patients and users and looking for other ways to provide health and social care that continuously improves the way it meets the needs of those who depend on it and the working lives of staff who provide it.
The above is from the Improvement Leaders' Guides produced by the Institute for Innovation and Improvement (NHS). These guides provide an excellent foundation for all your improvement work and are free for NHS employees.
Changes that will successfully improve both care and patient safety depend on building and using knowledge related to the specific context of the topic being considered. For example the more we know about patients’ needs, the way things are done, and about best practice, the better will be the improvements we can make.
This set of guidelines is designed to help improve knowledge in this way. A framework that helps plan and test changes on a small scale underpins them. The steps described below are based on experience and really do work
