This research funded by the Irish Health Research Board will study and benchmark (1) the policy and supporting structures that aim to promote quality and safety in the Irish and Scottish healthcare systems as a whole and (2) explore the enablers and barriers to implementing such policy in Irish and Scottish hospitals. Overall using qualitative and quantative method, the research will evaluate how system and organisational structures and processes affect quality and safety. Specifically, it will explore policy and institutional support for quality and safety at system-level, and the enactment of policy at organisation level. Hence the research will consider health system and policy design as well as the organisation of structures, systems and staff to deliver quality and safety within hospitals. The approach adopted is grounded in the increasing recognition that quality is a systems property that requires attention to the policy, organisational and managerial, as well as clinical, aspects of care. From this perspective concerns shifts away from individual errors and incidents and towards the overarching system and organisational enablers and barriers to quality and safety. Hence, integrating a system and organisational level focus will highlight where support is needed - at system or organisational level - to ensure that policies are effective on-the-ground.
Contacts
- HSRU email; hsru@abdn.ac.uk