Many people are working to improve healthcare quality to bring about safer, more beneficial and cost-effective care for patients. But all too often, there is little evidence to support what they do or demonstrate precisely which improvement projects, methods and techniques really work best.

In this paper by Mary Dixon-Woods, Peter Pronovost and Martin Marshall they:

• explain the key principles of the science of improvement and its application to safety
• identify recent applications of the science of improvement to large scale safety interventions.