Researchers at Monash University and Flinders University have released a new guide on how to establish and lead a quality improvement collaborative (QIC) to support senior healthcare professionals, managers and leaders across healthcare settings who are seeking to improve medication management practices.
A QIC uses an evidenced based approach to bring healthcare professionals together from different sites to learn, share and implement best practice in a measurable and sustainable way. QICs have successfully been used in a range of different fields and settings to improve the quality of healthcare.
Quality improvement strengthens health systems to deliver high quality person-centred care, improve processes for staff and implement evidence into practice.
The guide, Improving medication management together: a practical guide to establishing and leading a quality improvement collaborative, developed by researchers from The Centre for Medicine Use and Safety (CMUS) within the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) and Flinders University, aims to provide tools and simple steps for running a QIC.
Professor Simon Bell is the CMUS Director. "Quality improvement collaboratives go beyond just bringing people together," Professor Bell said.
"They provide a structured way for healthcare teams to implement changes, use data to track their progress, and learn from others on what works in practice. This helps healthcare teams to move from ideas to measurable improvement."
Professor Kate Laver, from the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University said this guide can be used to establish a QIC across a number of different settings and practice areas.
"For example, this guide could be used by an aged care organisation who would like to lead quality improvement activities across multiple sites, or a healthcare professional organisation or a primary health network that would like to bring teams together from various sites and organisations to improve practice," Professor Laver said.
The guide is informed by real life case studies of implementing a QIC in the national trial, called Maximising Embedded Pharmacists in AGed CAre Medication Advisory Committees (MEGA-MAC). The MEGA-MAC trial included health professionals working as knowledge brokers, supported by a national quality improvement collaborative, to implement Australia's new Guiding Principles for Medication Management in Residential Aged Care Facilities.
Dr Amanda Cross is a senior research fellow from CMUS and helped develop the guide., "Our experiences from the MEGA-MAC trial demonstrated the value and potential for quality improvement collaboratives and informed the development of this step-by-step guide," Dr Cross said.
"The MEGA-MAC quality improvement collaborative brought together pharmacists and nurses working across four states of Australia, and was supported by an expert panel of clinicians, implementation scientists and consumer representatives. It was an excellent example of how we can share ideas and work together to support implementation of best practice."
This guide was developed as part of Monash University's MEGA-MAC project. The MEGA-MAC project is funded by the Commonwealth of Australia's 2022 Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) Quality, Safety and Effectiveness of Medicine Use by Pharmacists grant (MRFMMIP000025).
To access the guide, Improving medication management together: a practical guide to establishing and leading a quality improvement collaborative, please visit here.
