Patients and carers play a crucial role in quality improvement. Patient and carer involvement is important as they can help staff understand what improvement they feel could elevate the standard of care they receive. There are two forms of involvement ‘Big I’ and ‘Little I’.
‘Big I’ means the QI project has direct and meaningful patient and carer involvement for the duration of the project. In other words, patients and carers become partners with staff in the project team throughout the improvement journey.
‘Little I’ is when patients and carers are asked to partake at certain stages during an improvement journey, for example asking patients for ideas on what needs improving.
We encourage our improvement teams to strive for Big I when possible. We provide support for staff to include patients and carers in their projects. We also support patients and carers in QI projects to ensure they flourish and become an integral part of an improvement team.