The Quality Cycle

High quality stroke services

These will be able to show that they exceed the standards set and also provide stroke care which is:

• Effective (i.e. improves patients’ outcomes)
• Efficient (does not waste resources)
• Accessible (are easy to access)
• Safe (have few complications or adverse events)
• Timely ( appropriate care is given at the appropriate time (i.e. no long waits)
• Participate in research (identify future treatments)

Research

• Research aims to establish whether a treatment, service or method of management improves patients’ outcome.
• The results of good research are likely to answer a question more reliably than the results of poor research.
• For further information see ‘Research topic loop’ on the right of this page.

Evidence

• This refers to all of the information available from research which is relevant to answering the questions about whether a treatment, service or method of management improves patients’ outcomes.
• For further information see ‘Evidence topic loop’ on the right of this page.

Evidence based guidelines

• These aim to provide healthcare staff with straightforward guidance about how to treat patients with certain conditions.
• However, considerable judgement is required to decide whether a specific piece of guidance applies to the individual patients you are caring for.
• For further information see ‘Evidence based guidelines topic loop’ on the right of this page.

Clinical standards

• An explicit statement of the proportion of patients who should receive a particular treatment e.g. 90% of stroke patients should be admitted to a stroke unit by the day following admission.
• For further information see ‘Clinical standards topic loop’ on right of this page.

Clinical audit

• The process of measuring the performance of the service in relation to the standards set.
• This aims to reliably determine which services are doing well, and areas where improvement is needed.
• For further information see ‘Clinical audit topic loop’ on right of this page.

Improving patient care

• • The complicated process of enabling services to improve their performance against standards, and in other less measurable aspects.
  • In Scotland Managed Clinical Networks (MCNs) for stroke have been set up to lead on this.
  • For further information see ‘Service improvement topic loop’ on right of this page.