Does Psychology Training Enhance Quality Improvement
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Does the addition of psychologically informed process and content make a difference to the training outcomes of QI training at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board?
IRAS ID
276104
Contact name
Rachel Trask
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 0 days
Research summary
Aneurin Bevan Continuous Improvement department (ABCi) has been conducting training on quality improvement (QI) with staff at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board (ABUHB) since 2013. QI is a collection of behavioural, technical and statistical skills which have proven successful in industry and healthcare settings to improve staff wellbeing and workplace efficiency. A hugely influential figure in the development of QI was W. Edwards Deming. Deming defined successful QI as being built upon 4 core factors: appreciation for the system you are working with, knowledge of statistical variation, a theory of knowledge to understand the challenges you face and knowledge of psychology. Deming called this 4-factor model the System of Profound Knowledge. Despite psychology making up 1 quarter of this model many professionals working in QI feel that these skills are consistently neglected in and are a major factor leading to the likelihood of project failure. Growing interest in this has led to numerous calls from the Institute of Healthcare Improvement in America and the Q-Community in the UK to call for greater attention to be paid to this issue.
In response to this demand, the research team has developed a psychologically informed training programme to enhance the standard QI training delivered by ABCi. In 2020, 2 ABCi training courses are due to take place. 1 will include the normal training content from 2019, the other will include the psychologically informed training content. The outcomes of the 2 courses will be compared to see if the psychology training improves candidates’ engagement with their work and the rate of success on their personal improvement projects. To the authors’ knowledge this is the first research of this kind to investigate the effectiveness of QI training and the first to look at analysing the importance of psychology within the System of Profound Knowledge.REC name
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REC reference
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