Quality improvement is not a new concept to pharmacy and there are several resources to help practices build their expertise. Core to improvement is sustaining a culture of quality, which requires ongoing commitment and deliberate management of the change process. How often do you think about the quality culture in your practice? Do you create time to develop the right culture? What is a quality improvement culture?

Pharmacy makes a valuable contribution to a patient’s experience of healthcare and there is increased focus on quality improvement (QI) to enhance patient safety and reduce service variation. As we know, setting and achieving quality criteria for pharmacy services will continue to evolve and be linked to remuneration. 

By initiating QI activities, many pharmacies are witnessing a natural evolution of change, reflecting impact on both the people and processes within the pharmacy setting. But how do we ensure that a ‘culture’ of continuous improvement is sustained to successfully impact health outcomes? 

Let’s consider first what we mean by a QI culture. Quality improvement can be described as a continuous and ongoing effort to achieve measurable improvements in the efficiency, effectiveness, performance, accountability, outcomes, and other indicators of quality in services or processes. However, when a quality culture is achieved “All employees, from senior leadership to frontline staff, have embedded QI into the way they work every day. Employees continuously consider how processes can be improved, and QI is no longer seen as an additional task but a frame of mind in which the application of QI is second nature. The basics of QI are so ingrained in staff that they seek out the root cause of problems” (Varkey and Antonio, 2010).