Reflections on A Spring Refresh

Photo by Chris Hardy on Unsplash

It’s true! Spring brings new shoots of growth, and not only in the garden. It’s been 6 years since we created our 3minuteQI™ pieces, a series of short, structured guides to essential QI tools and techniques.

Designed to be read in just 3-minutes, they provide the essential knowledge required to get started and put knowledge into practice in the workplace and learn more.

I’ve learnt so much from seeing how people take and use these 3-minute guides together with our simple worksheets to craft their first process map or fishbone diagram. I’ve seen where the guides are strong, and where we can provide more clarity with updated examples from our learners and, most importantly, help translate their learning into practice so that their efforts count.

Whilst the science behind these approaches remains steadfast, with a QI mindset, I was able to reflect on feedback from hundreds of learners as I embarked on a ‘refresh’ of these pieces – so this has been a learning curve for me too!

What has surprised me?

We have known for some time that learners will ‘avoid’ the humble bar chart if they can so have added in forcing functions to counter this. This has been intriguing to me as the bar chart is probably the ONE thing that we have all encountered before. I wondered if this ‘avoidance’ was because it is deemed too lowly a tool. On closer investigation I now think that most of us have forgotten how to engage in ‘simple counting’ and struggle working out what to count! The bar chart can quickly give us strong evidence that a problem we want to work on is worth the effort or, perhaps, has been exacerbated by a single recent event that is at the forefront of our mind. It can take minutes to collect a small amount of data and translate it into a graph providing us with a key insight into the size of the problem. It can also help us segment or focus in on the biggest part of a much bigger problem, giving direction to our improvement efforts and increasing the potential for a measurable impact.

What has challenged me?

Retracing our 3minuteQI™ for Run Charts and adding in a new one for Run Chart Rules has been my biggest challenge. This is an area we wanted to strengthen, to ensure our learners can answer the critical QI question: ‘Have I achieved my Aim?’ With our learners typically undertaking 5-15 PDSA test cycles in their 4 month Quality Improvement Project, their run chart helps them answer that question and say whether they’ve achieved their aim completely, partially, or not at all. They can also begin to think more deeply about the sustainability of their change as many of them prepare to rotate to another role.

Bringing our 3minuteQI™ series to life with examples from learners helps others follow in their footsteps, believing that they too can do this. Of course, it’s not easy to do this alone, and our mentor feedback, virtual sessions and support in our online space are the extra ingredients that are helping us achieve an 80% QIP completion rate. A large proportion of posters are being showcased at national and international conferences and shared back with teams in Trusts.

Completing this 3minuteQI™ refresh, and covering some new topics too, has kept me on my toes this Spring.

My next step is to see how our learners respond to the new versions and whether I have achieved my aim – of enhancing their learning and practice through the upgrades of learning materials. I’ll report back!