Guidelines for

Written Assignment: Quality improvement proposal

Identify a quality improvement opportunity in your organization or practice. In a 1250-1500-

word paper, describe the problem or issue and propose a quality improvement initiative
based on evidence-based practice.

Elements
- Indicate that the manuscript concerns an initiative to improve healthcare (broadly defined to include the
quality, safety, effectiveness, patient-centredness, timeliness, cost, efficiency, and equity of healthcare).
Problem Description:
Importance of the QI
problem
Available knowledge: Gap
between what we currently
know/practice and what we - Demonstrate understanding of the pertinent literature to briefly discuss
need to know/preferred
practice to achieve desired
QI outcomes:
Rationale
Specific Aim(s):
Context of the project:
Intervention (s):
Theory connecting QI
problem, context, and
proposed intervention
strategy:
Description
Title
Introduction
- Nature and significance of the local problem.
- Articulate why this quality problem is relevant beyond your local institution.
- Clarify the importance of the QI problem
- What the external impact of your QI initiative would be for other groups.
- Summary of what is currently known about the problem, including relevant
previous studies.
- What prior QI strategies have or have not worked to address this quality
problem?
prior strategies that have been attempted, including the strategy as well as
the required resources and resulting outcomes.
- Discuss how the results of previous research demonstrate support for the
quality improvement initiative and its projected outcomes.
- Include a minimum of three peer-reviewed sources published within the last
5 years
- Informal or formal frameworks, models, concepts and/or theories used to
explain the problem, any reasons or assumptions that were used to develop
the intervention(s) and reasons why the intervention(s) was expected to
work
- Purpose of the project and of this report.
- Clearly and concisely state the primary aim and, any relevant sub-aims of
the QI project:
- make clear what you hoped to achieve by carrying out your QI initiative.
- Write good ‘‘aim’’ statements, by making sure that they are ‘‘SMART’’
(specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, anytime bound).
Methods
- Contextual elements considered important at the outset of introducing the
intervention(s).
- Describe the context in which the QI work will be carried out (i.e., setting
and participants)
- Clearly articulate the link between the proposed solution and the problem it
will solve.
- Include a detailed description of the implementation strategy, articulating a
theory or rationale for why the specific proposed/chosen intervention (or
set of interventions) should fix the quality problem of interest.
- Description of the intervention(s) in sufficient detail that others could

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Study of the
intervention(s):
Multiple, iterative,
intervention steps:
The Local Context and Its
Impact on the QI Initiative:
Measures & Evaluation Plan
Analysis
Ethical considerations
Body of the assignment
written using APA style
Writing Style
References and
documentation of sources
reproduce it.
- Specifics of the team involved in the work.
- Discuss the steps necessary to implement the quality improvement
initiative, provide evidence and rationale to support your answer
- State how the intervention iteratively tested, refined, and will be
implemented, using rapid cycle change methodology or PDSA (plan-do-
study-act) cycles.
- Demonstrate enough evidence to refine the proposed intervention prior to
implementation (report how changes were tested and refined; reflect on
what worked, what did not, and why; and provide a description of the
eventual intervention).
- Consider the use of a figure or a table to summarize the key PDSA cycles,
providing a concise summary of what will be done.
- Approach chosen for assessing the impact of the intervention(s).
- Approach used to establish whether the observed outcomes were due to
the intervention(s).
- Include a detailed description of the local context and how these might
influence the implementation or outcomes of QI projects to sensitize
readers to the contextual factors that require careful consideration when
introducing the QI intervention to local institutions.
- links generalizable scientific evidence (the proposed intervention) to a
particular local context to generate measured performance improvement.
- Use of a family of measures, ideally includes outcome, process (fidelity), and
balancing (unintended consequences) measures to evaluate the impact of
their intervention.
- Measures chosen for studying processes and outcomes of the
intervention(s), including rationale for choosing them, their operational
definitions and their validity and reliability.
- Identify study variables
- Description of the approach to the ongoing assessment of contextual
elements that contributed to the success, failure, efficiency, and cost.
- Explain how the quality improvement initiative will be evaluated to
determine whether there was an improvement.
- Methods employed for assessing completeness and accuracy of data.
- Qualitative and quantitative methods used to draw inferences from the
data.
- Identifying hypothesis test, and statistical test that you would need to prove
that the quality improvement initiative succeeded.
- Methods for understanding variation within the data, including the effects
of time as a variable.
- Ethical aspects of implementing and studying the intervention(s) and how
they were addressed, including, but not limited to, formal ethics review and
potential conflict(s) of interest.
Writing Style & References
- Use Times Roman—12-point font
- Neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top,
bottom, and sides of each page.
- Solid academic writing
- Use professional language.
- Refer to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
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presented using APA
formatting guidelines.

References:
- Wong, B. M., & Sullivan, G. M. (2016). How to Write Up Your Quality Improvement Initiatives for
Publication. Journal of graduate medical education, 8(2), 128–133.
https://doi.org/10.4300/JGME-D-16-00086.1
- Ogrinc G, Davies L, Goodman D, Batalden P, Davidoff F, Stevens D. SQUIRE2.0 (Standards for
Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence): revised publication guidelines from a detailed
consensus process. BMJ Qual Saf. 2015 Sep 14. pii: bmjqs-2015004411. doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2015-
004411. Epub ahead of print.
- American Psychological Association (2020). Publication Manual of the American Psychological
Association, Seventh Edition. American Psychological Association

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