Quality Improvement Projects

When selecting your Quality Improvement project, consider these questions:

• What harm, value, and waste is evident?
• Is there inappropriate overuse, underuse, or misuse based on evidence based/best practices?
• How will you measure or quantify this type of success as a metric? If so, what is the gap (numeric) between current practice and what is possible?

• Research seeks to create new knowledge that can be generalizable to other populations/settings, while QI activities seek to apply existing knowledge (i.e., benchmarks, evidence, guidelines/best practices) to create change that will achieve the best possible clinical outcomes.
  • When an activity involves the inclusion of people to test a new, modified, or previously untested intervention, service, or program for which there is insufficient evidence to determine whether it is safe and/or effective, this is research involving humans and it is subject to IRB review and approval.
  • A comparative effectiveness study examining two evidence-based methods, with people randomized between the two methods to determine which is better, is also regarded as research involving humans.