Knowing, and Doing: Closing the Gaps in Board Leadership for Improvement of Quality and Safety

摘要

Boards bear the ultimate responsibility for everything in a health care organization, including quality and safety. To discharge that responsibility well, board members must have a solid knowledge base about quality and safety, and apply that knowledge effectively. A previous study has suggested that there is a considerable gap between what board members think they know and do, and what executives perceive about boards' capability in quality and safety.1 The article "Closing the Gap and Raising the Bar: Assessing Board Competency in Quality and Safety," by McGaffigan, Ullem, and Gandhi,2 which appears in this issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, provides a high level of detail about specific knowledge and practice gaps-- which should prove useful to those responsible for developing the quality and safety curriculum for boards.