Jacqui Prieto, Jennie Wilson, Alison Tingle, Emily Cooper, Melanie Handley, Jo Rycroft Malone, Jennifer Bostock, Heather Loveday
{"title":"Preventing urinary tract infection in older people living in care homes: the 'StOP UTI' realist synthesis.","authors":"Jacqui Prieto, Jennie Wilson, Alison Tingle, Emily Cooper, Melanie Handley, Jo Rycroft Malone, Jennifer Bostock, Heather Loveday","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2023-016967","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2023-016967","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Urinary tract infection (UTI) is the most diagnosed infection in older people living in care homes.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>To identify interventions for recognising and preventing UTI in older people living in care homes in the UK and explain the mechanisms by which they work, for whom and under what circumstances.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>A realist synthesis of evidence was undertaken to develop programme theory underlying strategies to recognise and prevent UTI. A generic topic-based search of bibliographic databases was completed with further purposive searches to test and refine the programme theory in consultation with stakeholders.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>56 articles were included in the review. Nine context-mechanism-outcome configurations were developed and arranged across three theory areas: (1) Strategies to support accurate recognition of UTI, (2) care strategies for residents to prevent UTI and (3) making best practice happen. Our programme theory explains how care staff can be enabled to recognise and prevent UTI when this is incorporated into care routines and activities that meet the fundamental care needs and preferences of residents. This is facilitated through active and visible leadership by care home managers and education that is contextualised to the work and role of care staff.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Care home staff have a vital role in preventing and recognising UTI in care home residents.Incorporating this into the fundamental care they provide can help them to adopt a proactive approach to preventing infection and avoiding unnecessary antibiotic use. This requires a context of care with a culture of personalisation and safety, promoted by commissioners, regulators and providers, where leadership and resources are committed to support preventative action by knowledgeable care staff.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":"178-189"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11874410/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141911647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Art of leading quality improvement.","authors":"Maitreya Coffey, Kelly Smith","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017909","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017909","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":"137-139"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142969577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Liane Ginsburg, Adam Easterbrook, Ariane Geerts, Whitney Berta, Lynda van Dreumel, Carole A Estabrooks, Peter G Norton, Adrian Wagg
{"title":"'We listened and supported and depended on each other': a qualitative study of how leadership influences implementation of QI interventions.","authors":"Liane Ginsburg, Adam Easterbrook, Ariane Geerts, Whitney Berta, Lynda van Dreumel, Carole A Estabrooks, Peter G Norton, Adrian Wagg","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017795","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017795","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>There is growing recognition in the literature of the 'Herculean' efforts required to bring about change in healthcare processes and systems. Leadership is recognised as a critical lever for implementation of quality improvement (QI) and other complex team-level interventions; however, the processes by which leaders facilitate change are not well understood. The aim of this study is to examine 'how' leadership influences implementation of QI interventions.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We drew on the leadership literature and used secondary data collected as part of a process evaluation of the Safer Care for Older Persons in residential Environments (SCOPE) QI intervention to gain insights regarding the processes by which leadership influences QI implementation. Specifically, using detailed process evaluation data from 31 unit-based nursing home teams we conducted a thematic analysis with a codebook developed a priori based on the existing literature to identify leadership processes.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Effective leaders (ie, those who care teams felt supported by and who facilitated SCOPE implementation) successfully developed and reaffirmed teams' commitment to the SCOPE QI intervention (theme 1), facilitated learning capacity by fostering follower participation in SCOPE and empowering care aides to step into team leadership roles (theme 2) and actively supported team-oriented processes where they developed and nurtured relationships with their followers and supported them as they navigated relationships with other staff (theme 3). Together, these were the mechanisms by which care aides were brought on board with the intervention, stayed on board and, ultimately, transplanted the intervention into the facility. Building learning capacity and creating a culture of improvement are thought to be the overarching processes by which leadership facilitates implementation of complex interventions like SCOPE.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Results highlight important, often overlooked, relational and sociocultural aspects of successful QI leadership in nursing homes that can guide the design, implementation and scaling of complex interventions and can guide future research.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":"146-156"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11874276/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142614528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Measuring the quality of surgery: should textbook outcomes be an off-the-shelf or a bespoke metric?","authors":"Kjetil Søreide","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-018194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2024-018194","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":"34 3","pages":"202-206"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143456919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marta Roczniewska, Hanna Augustsson, Sara Ingvarsson, Emma Hedberg Rundgren, Kamil Szymański, Ulrica von Thiele Schwarz, Per Nilsen, Henna Hasson
{"title":"Relative importance and interactions of factors influencing low-value care provision: a factorial survey experiment among Swedish primary care physicians.","authors":"Marta Roczniewska, Hanna Augustsson, Sara Ingvarsson, Emma Hedberg Rundgren, Kamil Szymański, Ulrica von Thiele Schwarz, Per Nilsen, Henna Hasson","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-018045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2024-018045","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Low-value care (LVC) describes practices that persist in healthcare, despite being ineffective, inefficient or causing harm. Several determinants for the provision of LVC have been identified, but understanding how these factors influence professionals' decisions, individually and jointly, is a necessary next step to guide deimplementation.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>A factorial survey experiment was employed using vignettes that presented hypothetical medical scenarios among 593 Swedish primary care physicians. Each vignette varied systematically by factors such as patient age, patient request for the LVC, physician's perception of this practice, practice cost to the primary care centre and time taken to deliver it. For each scenario, we measured the reported likelihood of providing the LVC. We collected information on the physician's worry about missing a serious illness.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Patient requests and physicians' positive perceptions of the practice were the factors that increased the reported likelihood of providing LVC the most (by 14 and 13 percentage points (pp), respectively). When the LVC was low in cost or not time-consuming, patient requests further boosted the likelihood of provision by 29 and 18 pp. In contrast, credible evidence against the LVC reduced the role of patient requests by 11 pp. Physicians' fear of missing a serious illness was linked with higher reported probability of providing LVC, and the credibility of the evidence against the LVC reduced the role of this concern.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The findings highlight that patient requests enhance the role of many determinants, while the credibility of evidence diminishes the impact of others. Overall, these findings point to the relevance of increased clinician knowledge about LVC, tools for patient communication and the use of decision support tools to reduce the uncertainty in decision-making.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143412822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
William Lea, Luke Budworth, Jane O'Hara, Charles Vincent, Rebecca Lawton
{"title":"Investigators are human too: outcome bias and perceptions of individual culpability in patient safety incident investigations.","authors":"William Lea, Luke Budworth, Jane O'Hara, Charles Vincent, Rebecca Lawton","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017926","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017926","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Healthcare patient safety investigations inappropriately focus on individual culpability and the target of recommendations is often on the behaviours of individuals, rather than addressing latent failures of the system. The aim of this study was to explore whether outcome bias might provide some explanation for this. Outcome bias occurs when the ultimate outcome of a past event is given excessive weight, in comparison to other information, when judging the preceding actions or decisions.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We conducted a survey in which participants were each presented with three incident scenarios, followed by the findings of an investigation. The scenarios remained the same, but the patient outcome was manipulated. Participants were recruited via social media and we examined three groups (general public, healthcare staff and experts) and those with previous incident involvement. Participants were asked about staff responsibility, avoidability, importance of investigating and to select up to five recommendations to prevent recurrence. Summary statistics and multilevel modelling were used to examine the association between patient outcome and the above measures.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>212 participants completed the online survey. Worsening patient outcome was associated with increased judgements of staff responsibility for causing the incident as well as greater motivation to investigate. More participants selected punitive recommendations when patient outcome was worse. While avoidability did not appear to be associated with patient outcome, ratings were high suggesting participants always considered incidents to be highly avoidable. Those with patient safety expertise demonstrated these associations but to a lesser extent, when compared with other participants. We discuss important comparisons between the participant groups as well as those with previous incident involvement, as victim or staff member.</p><p><strong>Interpretation: </strong>Outcome bias has a significant impact on judgements following incidents and investigations and may contribute to the continued focus on individual culpability and individual focused recommendations observed following investigations.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143389910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Georgia B Black, Brian D Nicholson, Julie-Ann Moreland, Naomi J Fulop, Georgios Lyratzopoulos, Ruth Baxter
{"title":"Doing 'detective work' to find a cancer: how are non-specific symptom pathways for cancer investigation organised, and what are the implications for safety and quality of care? A multisite qualitative approach.","authors":"Georgia B Black, Brian D Nicholson, Julie-Ann Moreland, Naomi J Fulop, Georgios Lyratzopoulos, Ruth Baxter","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017749","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017749","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Over the past two decades, the UK has actively developed policies to enhance early cancer diagnosis, particularly for individuals with non-specific cancer symptoms. Non-specific symptom (NSS) pathways were piloted and then implemented in 2015 to address delays in referral and diagnosis. The aim of this study was to outline the functions that enable NSS teams to investigate cancer and other diagnoses for patients with NSSs.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The analysis was derived from a multisite ethnographic study conducted between 2020 and 2023 across four major National Health Service (NHS) trusts. Data collection encompassed observations, patient shadowing, interviews with clinicians and patients (n=54) and gathered documents. We used principles of the functional resonance analysis method to identify the functions of the NSS pathway and analyse their relevance to patient safety.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Our analysis produced 29 distinct functions within NSS pathways, organised into two clusters: pretesting assessment and information gathering, and post-testing interpretation and management. Safety-critical functions encompassed assessing the reason for referral, deciding on a plan of investigation and estimating the remaining cancer risk. We also identified ways that teams build and maintain safety across all functions, for example, by cultivating generalist-specialist expertise within the team and creating continuity through patient navigation. Variation in practice across sites revealed targets for an NSS pathway blueprint that would foster local development and quality improvement.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Our findings suggest that national and local improvement plans could differentiate specific policies to reduce unwarranted variation and support adaptive variation that facilitates the delivery of safe care within the local context. Enhancing multidisciplinary teams with additional consultants and deploying patient navigators with clinical backgrounds could improve safety within NSS pathways. Future research should investigate different models of generalist-specialist team composition.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143063701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Large language models in healthcare information research: making progress in an emerging field.","authors":"Harish Tayyar Madabushi, Matthew D Jones","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017896","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017896","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":"73-76"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142494911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rising above the strain? Adaptive strategies used by healthcare providers in intensive care units to promote safety.","authors":"Debbie Massey, Brigid M Gillespie","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017813","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017813","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":"67-69"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142387874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}