Improvement science is about trying to understand how positive changes are made and sustained within organisations and by individuals, and how to remove ineffective or harmful practices. Improvement scientists unpick the reasons why certain practices and/or cultures do or do not work to improve outcomes for health and social care. Using this understanding, practices can be spread and adapted to suit different settings.
Changes might include ways in which information about patients with a particular illness are shared in a GP practice so that they get the right care, or the way in which new services are promoted to people in a local area to ensure everyone knows about and has access to those services. It might also include how premature babies are cared for in hospital, or how medicine is prescribed for older people with multiple long-term conditions.
Improvement science is not limited to thinking about processes and procedures. It can include thinking about the relationships between health and social care professionals and the patients, carers and service users they’re working with and supporting.
We know that how care is offered is really important to everybody’s health and wellbeing. There is evidence that a lack of a caring and compassionate approach underlies many problems in health and social care, and it is important find ways of making sure that people are cared for properly. Finding ways to meet everyone’s needs – particularly people who are more vulnerable and may have difficulty accessing or using health and social care services is the basis of person-centred care, which is one way of describing a caring and compassionate approach, which can help to reduce health inequalities and improve health and wellbeing.
We want to find, collate and disseminate the evidence to help services to become more person-centred, caring and compassionate. We want to find out how services can be as safe and reliable as possible, and ensure everyone can access the health and social care they need. That way, the health and wellbeing of everyone in Scotland will be improved.
The work within the research themes informs the work undertaken within our projects. There are currently five over-arching research themes:
- Improvement science methods – we are examining, adapting and developing methods for understanding how to design and evaluate improvement methodologies, frameworks and measures to assess the quality and safety of care.
- Context and evaluation – we are exploring how different services, organisational structures, cultures, social circumstances, individual situations and personalities and so on influence practice. What works in one setting might not work in another, and we need to understand why and how this happens.
- Behaviour change – we are exploring how to facilitate behaviour change among patients, carers, the public, and multi-professional groups.
Workforce capacity and capability for improvement – we are developing learning opportunities to enable health and care professionals to make changes and improvements that work and last.
- Sustainability and spread – we are learning from other successful improvements in health and care to understand out how to make changes that last and work across different contexts.
We also work with one platform, which is:
- Knowledge management, eHealth and health informatics – we are using and developing ways of gathering information about people and services in a way that does not impact negatively on health professionals’ interactions with patients/service users and we are doing this in an ethical way.
We want to improve services by making changes on a Scotland-wide scale. We cannot do this alone and we know how important it is to work with others and listen to the needs of people using and delivering services.
We promise to:
- Work with people from different professions and settings so that all of our work is relevant and informed.
- Make sure that we listen to and respect the opinions of lay people.
- Build on existing strength (ours and others) and learn from people already doing good work in the field.
- Evaluate and monitor our progress based on evidence to make sure that we are on the right track.
- Share our knowledge widely and build capacity through education.
We hope you find the information you’re looking for on our webpages or our Twitter feed. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you’re like to find out more or if you have suggestions for ways in which we might work together in future.