Primary Care Quality Improvement Methods Training Course

Course overview

Primary care teams are expected to improve access, continuity, safety, prescribing, long-term condition outcomes and patient experience while managing high demand and limited capacity. Yet many improvement projects stall because the problem is too broadly defined, baseline data are unreliable, changes are introduced without testing, or measures do not show whether care has genuinely improved. This course equips participants to lead disciplined, evidence-based quality improvement (QI) work in general practice, primary care networks and community-facing services.

Participants learn to frame a service problem using a project charter, map the current patient pathway, identify root causes and select measures that matter. The course applies the IHI Model for Improvement, SMART aims, driver diagrams, process mapping, PDSA cycles, run charts and statistical process control principles to primary care scenarios. Participants practise interpreting appointment, clinical, prescribing and patient-feedback data; balancing clinical quality with access, workload, equity and unintended consequences.

Teaching combines instructor-led method sessions with realistic case material, including missed reviews for patients with long-term conditions, delayed access, medicines safety and referral processes. Working in groups, participants develop and test a QI approach using structured templates and data displays. Each participant leaves with a practical primary care QI project pack: a scoped aim statement, baseline measure set, process map, driver diagram, PDSA test plan, stakeholder plan and 90-day implementation roadmap that can be refined with their local team.

The course is designed for clinicians, managers and improvement leads who already work with primary care performance or service-delivery issues and need a repeatable method for turning local data and frontline insight into measurable change.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a primary care QI project charter with a defined population, problem statement, scope, SMART aim and governance owner
• Map a patient journey using SIPOC and swimlane process maps to identify delay, hand-off and failure points
• Analyse root causes using fishbone diagrams, 5 Whys and Pareto analysis for a primary care service problem
• Create outcome, process and balancing measures for access, safety, clinical effectiveness and patient experience
• Build a driver diagram that connects a primary care improvement aim to primary drivers, change ideas and measures
• Plan and document sequential PDSA cycles using prediction, test conditions, data collection and adaptation criteria
• Interpret run charts and basic statistical process control signals to distinguish common-cause from special-cause variation
• Produce a 90-day implementation plan with stakeholder actions, reporting cadence, risk controls and sustainability checks

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• General Practice Managers — who need to convert operational pressures into structured, measurable improvement projects
• Primary Care Network Managers — who coordinate improvement across practices, services and multidisciplinary teams
• GPs and Clinical Directors — who sponsor clinical quality, access and safety changes while protecting clinical credibility
• Practice Nurses and Advanced Clinical Practitioners — who lead pathway improvements for long-term conditions, screening and care reviews
• Quality Improvement Leads — who need standard methods, measures and governance-ready project documentation
• Medicines Optimisation Pharmacists — who improve prescribing safety, monitoring processes and medicines-related patient outcomes

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience of working in a general practice, primary care network, community primary care service or closely related support function. They should be comfortable discussing routine operational or clinical data such as appointment volumes, waiting times, care-review completion, prescribing indicators or incident themes. Familiarity with basic Microsoft Excel tables and charts is useful, but advanced spreadsheet analysis, statistics software and prior formal QI training are not required. Participants should bring one real service problem they may wish to develop during the week; no coding, Lean certification or clinical qualification is required.

Training methodology

An experienced healthcare QI instructor leads short, applied sessions followed by worked examples from general practice and PCN settings. Participants use project charters, process maps, driver diagrams, PDSA worksheets and run-chart templates to work through access, care-review, prescribing and safety cases. Small-group peer review tests the logic of aims, measures and change ideas from clinical, operational and patient perspectives. Daily exercises build towards an individual application plan, with instructor feedback on feasibility, data availability, governance and implementation risks.

Course outline

Day 1: Defining the improvement problem

• Quality domains in primary care: safety, effectiveness, experience, timeliness, equity and efficiency
• IHI Model for Improvement and the three improvement questions
• Writing a problem statement from local service evidence
• Setting SMART aims with population, timeframe and target boundaries
• Project charter components: scope, exclusions, sponsor and governance route
• Stakeholder mapping across practice, PCN, patients and partner services
• Baseline data sources for appointments, recalls, prescribing and patient feedback

Workshop: Participants draft a project charter and stakeholder map for a selected primary care problem, then receive structured peer critique.

Day 2: Understanding pathways and causes

• SIPOC analysis for defining suppliers, inputs, process steps, outputs and customers
• Swimlane process mapping for clinical, administrative and digital hand-offs
• Patient journey mapping and identification of experience pain points
• Value-added, non-value-added and necessary administrative activity
• Fishbone cause-and-effect analysis using people, process, technology, policy and environment categories
• 5 Whys questioning to test causal assumptions
• Pareto analysis to prioritise high-frequency or high-impact failure modes

Workshop: Teams map an overdue long-term-condition review pathway and produce a prioritised root-cause analysis.

Day 3: Measurement and data for improvement

• Operational definitions that make measures consistent and auditable
• Outcome, process and balancing measures for primary care projects
• Sampling plans and data-collection sheets for rapid-cycle improvement
• Numerator, denominator and rate calculations for clinical and service measures
• Data quality checks for missing, delayed, duplicate and inconsistent records
• Run charts: medians, shifts, trends and astronomical points
• Statistical process control basics: common-cause and special-cause variation

Workshop: Participants create a measurement plan and interpret a run-chart dataset for a same-day access improvement case.

Day 4: Designing and testing change

• Driver diagrams linking aims, primary drivers, secondary drivers and change ideas
• Generating change ideas from evidence, frontline insight and patient feedback
• PDSA cycle design: prediction, test, observation and adaptation
• Choosing test scale, duration, location and participant group
• Rapid-cycle testing without disrupting clinical safety or continuity
• Failure mode and effects analysis for higher-risk service changes
• Recording learning in PDSA logs and decision records

Workshop: Participants build a driver diagram and complete two staged PDSA cycles for a medicines-monitoring or access scenario.

Day 5: Implementation, sustainability and reporting

• Selecting interventions for adoption, adaptation, abandonment or further testing
• Implementation planning with milestones, owners, dependencies and escalation routes
• Equity impact assessment for access and service redesign changes
• Engaging staff, patients and patient participation groups in improvement
• Visual management using project boards, dashboards and concise update reports
• Sustainability checks: standard work, training, audit and performance review
• Presenting QI findings to practice partners, PCN boards and governance groups

Workshop: Participants finalise and present a 90-day QI implementation roadmap, including measures, PDSA sequence, risks and reporting plan.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, IHI Model for Improvement, NHS England Quality Improvement Guide

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions