Improving Patient Care: The Implementation of Change in Clinical Practice

Abstract

In the field of health care, a very large number of valuable insights, procedures and technologies become available each year. These come from well planned scientific research or careful experiments and evaluation in everyday practice. As many of these innovations are not adopted into daily practice, at the expense of improved patient care, it is crucial to understand how sucessful implementation can be achieved. There are many reasons for this failure, such as the nature of the proposed method of working or simply that it is new; similarly, economic, structural or financial barriers may exist. Given the increasing significance and frequency of change in healthcare environments, the new research findings and hence insights into the implementation of change must be made available. This is the purpose of the book.