Sustainably Improving Health Care

Culture, Context and Quality in Health Sciences Research, Education, Leadership and Patient Care (Second book in a series of five) Sustainably Improving Health Care promotes the importance of integrating improved care outcomes, system performance, and professional development so that the future of health-care advancement is creative and sustainable. It addresses the challenge of creating and nurturing a culture of continuous improvement that is able to sustain and generate creative professional work for the improvement of health care. Using real-world examples, the book succinctly reveals how the model can be practically applied from a variety of different perspectives. "This book makes the persuasive argument that well-intended efforts to redesign and reform health care will enjoy only short lives without the full commitment and engagement of the health-care worker - the product of the sustainability- and capacity-building engine of professional development." Dave Davis MD, CCFP, FCFP, in the Foreword "This book is about a model that has emerged from our own work, our observations of the work of colleagues and others, and our refl ections about the requirements for the future of the continual improvement of health care. We explore its origins, its content and manifestations, and its implications, particularly for health professional leaders interested in the ongoing improvement of health care. Form and vitality develop in the model as it engages reality - the reality of trying to create cultures of sustainable, generative approaches to the ongoing improvement of health care." From the Preface

Paul Batalden MD and Tina Foster MD respectively Professor, The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Dartmouth Medical School, Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA; Associate Professor, The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Dartmouth Medical School, Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA

Foreword. Preface. The evolutionary beginnings of the model. Better patient, population outcome: practical approaches that health systems can adopt for measuring the health of patients and populations. Better system performance: approaches to improving care by addressing different levels of systems. Better professional development - competence, mastery, pride and joy. Teaching the triangle - the Dartmouth-Hitchcock leadership preventive medicine residency program. Simple, complicated and complex phenomena in health care - using the triangle to improve reliability and resiliency in health care systems. Faculty as coaches: their development and their work. Governance, leadership, management, organizational structure and oversight principles and practices. The triangle and undergraduate medical education. Triangle synergies in a national quality and safety education initiative in nursing. Collaborative improvement of cancer care in southeastern Sweden - striving for better patient and population health, better care, and better professional development. Contributing authors' reflections.