Improving the reporting of QI in surgery: approaches suggested by interview participants
| Domain | Potential actions for QI authors | Potential actions for healthcare organisations delivering QI work | Potential actions for journal editors publishing QI work |
| Article format | Use existing reporting guidelines and taxonomies to guide the structure of your QI report. | Ensure familiarity of editorial staff and peer reviewers with QI reporting tools. | |
| Know your audience. Do you want your reader to use the report to generate ideas for a new intervention, to replicate your intervention in another setting, or as a starting point for modification? | Provide a clear statement about whether qualitative approaches to data collection and writing are acceptable. | ||
| Use supplementary materials, and embed URLs (web links) into the article where possible. | Provide a clear statement of which additional resources are available to authors (eg, online supplements). | ||
| Be available to speak to your readers | Support the open access movement to encourage connection between authors and consumers. | ||
| Organisational infrastructure | Build internal support and capacity for QI, such as protected time to conduct QI and more formal relationships between clinical QI teams and research nurses. | Sustain open communication channels with QI authors and consumers about what QI is and how it should be reported. | |
| Consider using a multidisciplinary writing team, how to support patient involvement, and seeking external evaluation. | Build networks with external academic organisations (such as universities) and patients. | ||
| Work with hospital management to identify problems that are most relevant to patients (enable a breadth of topics). | Work with QI teams to identify problems that are most relevant to patients (enable a breadth of topics). | ||
| Consider enrolling in an education programme to enhance your QI reporting. | Embed specific training about QI in library training programmes, online training programmes or mentorship schemes. | Consider providing some educational material for editors and peer reviewers about QI. | |
| Scientific outputs | Demonstrate why your intervention was thought to work (eg, consider using theory, process evaluation, or a QI diary). | Enable structured conversations with QI stakeholders to consider how QI can be reported and what good reporting in QI looks like. | |
| Provide your reader with a realistic view of what is needed and what is feasible. | |||
| Consider submitting for publication a QI project that did not go well. | Support a culture where negative experiences that create learning are shared. | Give specific advice on how to write a negative study well. |
*Taxonomy and Reporting guideline examples.10 34 51–53
QI, quality improvement.