Despite decades of focus, patient harm rates in Ireland have not improved significantly. Despite investment in, and an increasing culture of quality improvement in Irish health and social care, the services frequently fall below acceptable standards on all quality dimensions – efficiency, effectiveness, equity accessibility and timeliness. If we add staff welfare as a quality metric the picture is no better. Nor is it if we are looking for person or even kin-centred care.
EQUIPS aims to build a community of Quality and Patient Safety (QPS) researchers, knowledge users, patients, public and other stakeholders to change the landscape of Irish QPS research. It will break down silos between stakeholder groups, between researchers of different disciplines and orientations, between knowledge users of different stripes. It will demystify QPS research for the patient and the public.
EQUIPS will have three strands. The Enable strand will put all the pieces in place to build a thriving research community – events, information sources, capacity and capability building. The Understanding and Informing strand will draw on this community set priorities and strategies for QPS research, identify barriers and enablers and evaluate the network itself to apply the quality improvement cycle to it. The Focussing strand will consist of clusters to start working on priority QPS research topics, set the agenda for them, put consortia together and start pursuing funding. Two initial clusters will focus on System and Process Design and Implementation and Evaluation.
