Eight steps to completing a practice improvement project

Practice improvement increases the quality of the client experience and outcomes through assessing and refining service delivery processes. Whether large or small, improvements to practice can have lasting effects on the health and well-being of clients. If you have a practice improvement idea in mind, or would like to explore options for the future, use the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) approach. It is a “systematic, repeatable, and teamwork-based process for solving problems and realizing opportunities for enhanced performance at the organization, system, process, and employee levels” (Braveman, 2019, p. 23). The PDSA approach may feel familiar to occupational therapy practitioners (OTPs) because it follows similar steps as the process outlined in the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework (American Occupational Therapy Association [AOTA], 2020). An OTP can use the PDSA method to identify goals, develop action plans, and assess progress. Using this approach can also help teams collect data to demonstrate positive and repeatable improvements, develop new processes, and document changes in client care and service delivery.