Quality, service improvement and redesign (QSIR)

The QSIR programmes focus on service improvement and are delivered to a range of staff involved in healthcare.

What is QSIR?

The QSIR programmes are delivered in a variety of formats to suit different levels of improvement experience and are supported by publications that guide participants in the use of tried and tested improvement tools, and featured approaches, as well as encouraging reflective learning.

QSIR College

The QSIR College programme offers NHS organisations and health systems a unique opportunity to develop quality and efficiency improvement capability within their organisation or across their system, enabling them to rapidly build up a sustainable local skills base.

Participants in QSIR College will learn how to train clinical and non-clinical colleagues in the QSIR practitioner programme, providing them with the know-how to design and implement more efficient patient-centred services. Based on tried and tested tools and approaches, QSIR covers the breadth of service improvement skills.

About the programme

QSIR College is designed to develop candidates to become associate members of the QSIR teaching faculty and go on to upskill other staff across their organisation or within their system. To ensure sustainability, it is necessary for applications from individual NHS organisations to feature at least three candidates. Health system applications are expected to include between 6 to 10 candidates drawn from the various organisations involved in their sustainability and transformation plan.

Each successful candidate for the cohorts commencing in January 2019 commits to delivering at least 3 cohorts of the QSIR programme by November 2020.

Who is the programme for?

The programme is designed for both clinical and non-clinical staff with significant experience in service improvement. Candidates need to be committed to working as a member of a local team to roll out the QSIR practitioner programme within their organisation or across their system.

  • QSIR College Yearbook 2019/20 – This yearbook introduces our QSIR College graduates (accredited as associate members of the QSIR teaching faculty) and highlights the fantastic work they are doing to spread quality, service improvement and redesign skills throughout the NHS and affiliated health and care services.

The requirements of QSIR College

QSIR College candidates will be required to attend 5 QSIR practitioner development workshops before sitting a virtual assessment to test their level of quality and service improvement knowledge in relation to the QSIR curriculum. Successful candidates will then progress to mandatory participation in a facilitation skills workshop and optional webinars in preparation for formal teaching assessments of candidates’ ability to teach QSIR practitioners. Only those who successfully meet all assessment criteria will be accredited as associate members of ACT Academy’s QSIR teaching faculty, and therefore qualified to deliver QSIR within their organisation or system.

It is essential that each applicant organisation or system demonstrates they are prepared to support, enable and champion their candidates to fully benefit from the programme and also successfully roll out QSIR within their organisation/across their system.

Interested in QSIR College?

If you’re interested in developing a quality and service improvement capability teaching faculty or would like to organise a QSIR for Boards session, you can contact our faculty members at england.mixedmethods@nhs.net. Please put ‘QSIR College’ as the subject of your email.

Find out more

As an associate member of the QSIR faculty, I feel part of the effort to build a broad and lasting quality improvement movement in the NHS. Having access to a national, centrally endorsed, accredited QI curriculum can only help with that, it creates a common language and set of skills.

And, as a QSIR accredited trainer within my own organisation, QSIR gives me access to excellent, ready-made resources – exercises, handbooks, slide decks – that give us a really good platform from which to localise QI education to our own needs.

Dave Grewcock, Head of Improvement, UCLH Institute, University College London Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and associate member of the QSIR faculty.

See how the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire integrated care system (ICS) is building sustainable quality and service improvement capacity and capability across their system. Our QSIR College enables NHS organisations and health systems to create their own team of associate.

This film illustrates a typical day in the life of a graduate of our QSIR College programme working as part of a team to deliver our Quality, Service Improvement and Redesign (QSIR) programme across their STP.

Find out about our QSIR suite of programmes delivered and designed by the Advancing Change & Transformation (ACT) Academy.

Staff at Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust describe the impact QSIR training has had.

Find out more about our Advancing Change programmes.

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