International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance: Volume 12 Issue 4

The Patient’s Charter: a tool for quality improvement?

Christine Farrell

Reports on research carried out in 1997/98 which used four different methods in a staged process: literature review, in‐depth interviews, a postal questionnaire and focus groups…

A two‐level integrated approach to self‐assessment in healthcare organisations

Ulises Ruiz, José Simón, Pedro Molina, J. Jimenez, J. Grandal

Defining quality of healthcare and determining how to improve organisational performance in developed countries is still an unresolved issue among healthcare professionals…

Improving organisational culture through innovative development programmes

Sue Jackson, Suzanne Hinchliffe

Recognising that changing culture is the most important role of a leader, the authors provide a diagnostic description of the culture within the nursing directorate of a National…

Developing a competency framework to support training in evidence‐based healthcare

Alan Cowling, Karin Newman, Susie Leigh

This paper focuses on the practice of evidence‐based healthcare by doctors, nurses, midwives and the professions allied to medicine in four NHS Trusts in and around London. This…

Functional status classification of institutionalized elderly in Israel

Rachel Fleishman, Fernando Potel, Dror Walk, Jenny Mandelson, Gad Mizrahi, Fanny Yuz, Miriam Bar‐Giora

In Israel, institution staff classify residents’ functional status as part of the routine governmental surveillance of institutions for semi‐independent and frail elderly…

Towards routine user assessment of mental health service quality performance

David M. Rea

The need to incorporate mental health service users in routine measurement of service effectiveness is included among recent policy proposals. However, mental health services pose…