ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the origins of quality improvement from the manufacturing industry and considers how these approaches have been implemented into healthcare, in particular in the National Health Service (NHS) to date. In industry, ensuring quality saves organisations. In healthcare, ensuring quality saves lives. The term ‘quality improvement’ (QI) is frequently misunderstood in healthcare. Lack of knowledge and experience about quality improvement is one of the key barriers to successful implementation in the NHS. Quality improvement is defined as a complex social intervention involving interrelated processes such as training, teamwork, data feedback and support. The current system was considered very time consuming and unreliable. Industrial approaches to quality improvement were developed in the manufacturing industry before the Second World War. The different approaches to quality improvement can be used individually or, as is more likely in healthcare, in combination.
