Designing a quality improvement intervention: a systematic approach
Open accessAbstract
Most quality improvement or change management interventions are currently designed intuitively and their results are often disappointing. While improving the effectiveness of interventions requires systematic development, no specific methodology for composing intervention strategies and programmes is available. This paper describes the methodology of systematically designing quality of care improvement interventions, including problem analysis, intervention design and pretests. Several theories on quality improvement and change management are integrated and valuable materials from health promotion are added. One method of health promotion-intervention mapping-is introduced and applied. It describes the translation of knowledge about barriers to and facilitators of change into a concrete intervention programme. Systematic development of interventions, although time consuming, appears to be worthwhile. Decisions that have to be made during the design process of a quality improvement intervention are visualised, allowing them to serve as a starting point for a systematic evaluation of the intervention.
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Four of the 15 included papers incorporated Intervention Mapping.
“Four of these [20, 23, 26, 27] incorporated Intervention Mapping [29]”
From Methods for designing interventions to change healthcare professionals’ behaviour: a systematic review (2017) · cites this paper as [20]
Eleven of the 15 included papers incorporated other approaches, tools, or resources as a component of the intervention design process.
“Eleven of the 15 papers incorporated other approaches, tools, or resources as a component of the intervention design process [14, 19–28].”
From Methods for designing interventions to change healthcare professionals’ behaviour: a systematic review (2017) · cites this paper as [20]
Five of the 15 included papers incorporated just one other published tool.
“Five of 15 incorporated just one other published tool [20, 24, 26–28]”
From Methods for designing interventions to change healthcare professionals’ behaviour: a systematic review (2017) · cites this paper as [20]
Six of the 15 papers used the structured interview processes outlined in the Theoretical Domains Framework or in Intervention Mapping.
“Six papers used the structured interview processes outlined in the TDF [19, 21, 25] or in Intervention Mapping [20, 26, 27].”
From Methods for designing interventions to change healthcare professionals’ behaviour: a systematic review (2017) · cites this paper as [20]
Among the papers that linked barriers to intervention components, methods included mapping TDF barriers to the BCT taxonomy and using the structured approaches described in Intervention Mapping.
“Methods to link barriers to intervention components included mapping TDF-barriers to the BCT taxonomy [19, 21, 25], as well as using the structured approaches described in Intervention Mapping [20, 26, 27].”
From Methods for designing interventions to change healthcare professionals’ behaviour: a systematic review (2017) · cites this paper as [20]
Four of the 15 methods papers for designing interventions to change HCPs' behaviour incorporated Intervention Mapping.
“However, we did find four methods papers for designing interventions to change HCPs’ behaviour that incorporated Intervention Mapping [20, 23, 26, 27].”
From Methods for designing interventions to change healthcare professionals’ behaviour: a systematic review (2017) · cites this paper as [20]
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- Authors
- van Bokhoven, M. A.
- Venue
- Quality and Safety in Health Care
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Published
- 2003-06-01
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- >3
- Pages
- 215-220
- ISSN
- 1475-3898 (ISSN-L)
- 1475-3901
- PMC
- PMC1743716
- OpenAlex
- W2116846999
- Cited by
- 204
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2025: 8 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 15 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 12
- FWCI
- 14.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- BMJ Quality & Safety (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Policy Implementation Science
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Health Information Management › Healthcare Quality and Management
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Clinical practice guidelines implementation
- Keywords
- quality improvement intervention, intervention design, change management, intervention mapping, health promotion, problem analysis, quality of care, pretesting
- MeSH terms
- Decision Making, Organizational, Diagnostic Tests, Routine, Family Practice, Health Promotion, Humans, Organizational Innovation, Practice Patterns, Physicians', Social Change, Systems Analysis, Program Development, Total Quality Management
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