Bridging the gap: integrating quality management into health promotion practice

摘要

In the 1940's, the business world saw a move towards the use of quality management to ensure the quality and consistency of the product for the customer. By the 1980's, quality paradigms had started to infiltrate the health system in an attempt to reduce clinical errors and improve patient satisfaction. During the 1990's funders of health promotion programmes in Europe and the US began to demand that quality management (QM) strategies were built into programmes as a pre-requisite to funding to ensure that a quality product was delivered to customers (Ader et al., 2001; Kahan and Goodstadt, 1999; 0vretveit, 1996 & 1999; Speller et al., 1997). The question then arises of how health practitioners are to implement a QM business paradigm into their programmes, while staying true to the fundamental philosophies of health promotion. Although a number of authors have addressed parts of this question, there remain gaps in the literature on how to do this in practice (Ader et al., 2001; Kahan and Goodstadt, 1999; Maycock and Hall, 2003; 0vretveit, 1996 & 1999; Speller et al., 1997).%Ces dernières années, les tentatives pour intégrer le concept de gestion de la qualité dans la pratique de la promotion de la santé ont été nombreuses. L'introduction de la gestion de la qualité peut améliorer le travail effectué dans la pratique pour peu qu'elle soit en accord avec les principes, concepts et philosophies qui sous-tendent la promotion de la santé. Cet article utilise une étude de cas pour déterminer comment les interventions promotrices de santé peuvent être améliorées à travers l'intégration et l'utilisation des méthodes de gestion de la qualité.