Who is your Quality Professional ?

Quality Professional (QP) can come from any background, but must have appropriate experience and/or education (degree or certificates) that arms them in exploiting concepts and tools of Quality improvement.

 

“It takes all kinds to make the world go round.”
-Trent Shelton.

 

More importantly it is pertinent that she/he is blessed with a certain personality; you can call them a person of Quality (pardon the pun). Which means they have high integrity necessary to investigate adverse events objectively and let the chips fall where they may. They should be curious to dig for data, scientific in their approach, and brave to run with the truth.

They should be non-threatening and non-manipulating and should also appear to be so. Now, they don't have to be persona grata but someone that everyone trusts to not besmirch their reputation or ensnare them in a blame-game or wrongly encourage them to blurt something unprofessional.

Because  the pendulum of physician involvement swings from complete non-commitment to "I have all the great ideas". A QP should be able to sniff out those patterns. People-reading also helps to predict degree of involvement from concerned parties. QPs often find themselves having to appeal to human values to promote the just causes of patient safety.

Soft skills are as important if not more in this job. Some physicians are reluctant paying attention to non-clinical matters. They don't want to speak to "administration" or even non-physicians in some rare cases. Sometimes they'll be interested in a Quality Improvement project, but only if it leads to a academic publication.

The other kind is enthused about change, but only if they get their way. They will want to propose a solution even before the QP has finished stating the problem. They feel they know the system inside out and of course no one is brighter than them. Beware of this group - this is worse than the former because they will take you on a path (their path) that you may end up spending much time and resources to no avail.  Teams should first discuss the problem in a multidisciplinary setting where all stakeholders are represented, draw process maps if need be, get feedback from the teams that will be affected by the proposed solution and only then implement the proposed plan.

 A person who has a stomach for drama, can herd (both perky and lazy) cats, has eternal optimism, but a realistic view can be successful as a quality professional It's a tough job, but one that is hugely rewarding.