Quality Improvement Series in partnership with the BMJ

The BMJ in partnership with and funded by the Health Foundation are launching a joint series of papers exploring how to improve the quality of health care delivery.

Over the next year and beyond, the series aims to support clinicians by providing thoughtful and targeted material on key topics in quality improvement, and help to guide quality improvement learning and practice.

The quality improvement series will discuss the evidence for systematic quality improvement, provide knowledge and support to clinicians and ultimately will aim to help improve care for patients.

All articles in the series are open access; to find out more visit bmj.com/quality-improvement

May edition

• Editorials
  Jennifer Dixon and colleagues: Creating space for quality improvement
  Anya de Longh and Sibylle Erdmann: Better healthcare must mean better for patients
• Analysis
  Jeffrey Braithwaite: Changing how we think about healthcare improvement

September edition

• Feature
  Paul Batalden: Getting more health from healthcare: quality improvement must acknowledge patient coproduction

The articles are part of a series commissioned by The BMJ based on ideas generated by a joint editorial group with members from the Health Foundation and The BMJ, including a patient/carer. The BMJ retained full editorial control over external peer review, editing, and publication. Open access fees and The BMJ’s quality improvement editor post are funded by the Health Foundation.

Further reading

• Quality improvement made simple: what everyone should know about healthcare quality improvement, 2013: This quick guide provides an explanation of some common approaches used to improve quality, including where they have come from, their underlying principles and their efficacy and applicability within the healthcare arena.
• The habits of an improver, 2015: This paper offers a way of viewing the field of improvement from the perspective of the men and women who deliver and co-produce care on the ground – the improvers on whom the NHS depends. It describes 15 habits which such individuals regularly deploy.
• Perspectives on context, 2014: A series of essays by leading academics exploring the issue of context in improving the quality of patient care. Building on these essays, we published a further evidence review on context in 2015.