ABSTRACT
All clinicians are now expected to engage in quality improvement projects, and the UK specialty training programmes for doctors require skills in undertaking clinical audits as well as quality improvement projects. Although doctors are reasonably familiar with the collection of data for audit purposes, collecting data for the measurement of service and quality improvement requires an additional skill set. Improvement science advocates that in order to improve something you must be able to measure it. There is a general belief that you cannot improve what you don't measure, but not all measurement is created equally. Measurement without improvement is just harassment. Doctors play an essential role in quality improvement and clinical expertise appears critical for success in many health improvement projects, not just for the obvious reason of needing to understand the terminology but also to bring credibility to any findings which may then require further participation in improvement projects.
