Quality Culture in healthcare

Quality Culture in healthcare
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Table of Contents
Quality culture.................................................................................................................................2
Quality culture in healthcare............................................................................................................4
Historical view of quality culture in healthcare...........................................................................4
Importance of quality culture in healthcare.................................................................................5
Changing the culture in healthcare..................................................................................................9
Changing the culture in healthcare..................................................................................................9
Measuring quality culture in healthcare........................................................................................12
References......................................................................................................................................18

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Quality culture
Quality culture is defined as a set of standards which directs in improving the daily working
practices. It is considered as the important factor of organizational culture which can be defined
as the communal adhesive that helps in holding all the employees of the organization together.
Quality culture is mainly about co-operation, partnership, team working, sharing of experiences,
supporting an individual, and behaviour of stakeholders (Mannion, Konteh and Davies, 2009). It
is also defined as the values that facilitate as well as encourage self-reflection to develop
strategic initiatives. It can also be referred to a set of accepted as well as shared patterns of
quality, which requires to be found in the management system and organizational culture.
Quality culture can also refer to the organizational culture that contributes to the expansion of
efficient and effective care quality. The culture is made up of multiple variables such as
assumptions, structures, and rituals, modes of interaction, control mechanisms and membership.
It primarily refers to the awareness of all the individuals in the organization about the daily needs
of the customers or clients. It is also determined to be the ability of an organization or institution
in developing a quality assurance system in everyday work to accomplish quality assurance
consistently.
Organizational culture is considered to be the set of shared beliefs or standards that interact with
the system, structure and people of the organization to generate behavioural standards. Quality
culture is closely based on the culture of the organization. Organizational culture possess three
basic elements such as values, norms, and beliefs in which values means principles like
innovation or customer satisfaction; norms means standards of behaviour and beliefs means
assumptions. The presence of quality culture in an organization embeds every feature of
organization which involves promotion, recruiting, compensation, and training, the layout of the
office, decision-making, orientation and style of management. Based on quality culture, the
organization can maintain its culture effectively to satisfy the customers or clients (Dixon-
Woods, McNicol and Martin, 2012). Quality culture helps in bringing teamwork throughout the
organization, which shows that managers and employees have close co-operation with each
other. The firm can improve the performance of the employees or the management by
maintaining quality in its organizational culture. The culture also allows the staff members to
speak the truth and discuss the quality issues with the senior executives rather than ignore the

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problems. Both quality culture and organizational culture is regarded to the set of shared beliefs,
norms and standards to enhance the quality of services served to the clients.
Organizational culture in healthcare requires to maintain quality in its services offered to the
patients. Quality culture is a must for enhancing quality care provided to the patients.
Effectiveness of the organization can be traced out through the function of the quality culture of
the organization. The culture can be taken as a metaphor that describes the socialization process
through society, family, religious and educational institutions. The culture is also considered as
an attribute in which the single coherent culture of the organization represented. The individual
is required first to understand the organizational culture to understand the quality culture better.
It can be maintained only with the help of organizational culture. The healthcare organization
needs to maintain an awareness of quality among the clinical workers. It also requires to
empower as well as encourage clinical staffs (Gambi et al., 2015). The organizational culture is
recognized as a significant variable in managing the overall performance of the organization. The
shared values, beliefs and norms of the organization are also known as quality culture. The
culture is associated with efficiency as well as the performance of all the group members that
helps in maintaining the quality of the management.
Quality culture means to put quality in the way of life, and the practices or behaviour of the
organization reflect the principles of quality culture. Thus, it shows that quality culture is closely
related to organizational culture. The core values along with beliefs of a quality culture include
customer focus, open communication, teamwork throughout the firm, empowerment and
engagement of employees, consistently improving the quality of the services, and making
intelligent decisions by solving the issues systematically. These values and beliefs of quality
culture are similar to the value and beliefs of organizational culture (Dawson, Guchait and
Madera, 2018). The traits or features of an organizational culture represent the quality through
various ways and interpret the same in the organization. It is vital for every business entities to
create as well as sustain a quality culture which helps in accomplishing the long-term success of
the organization. Quality culture facilitates consistent change or improvement in the norms,
beliefs and values of the organization. To sustain a quality culture in the organization, it is
essential for the top management to raise a setting of teamwork and common trust within the
workplace, which the management could do by maintaining an open communication with the

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employees, motivate free flow of information, honour commitments, and encourage discussion
of major issues.
The organizational management could hire or employ new candidates for main positions who
may feel friendly with the quality culture. The core values of the organizational culture can be
reinforced by utilizing the standards of the quality culture. Moreover, the firm can reinforce the
quality culture by integrating the significant values in the performance management system of
the organization (Karimi and Brazier, 2016). The senior management should give suitable
training and support to the staff members, which allows the workers to hold the new culture and
understand the quality principles. Quality training of the staffs must cover the quality awareness
of the quality culture, basic concepts of quality principles, process management, team building
and interpersonal skills. The employees are required to give ownership of the cultural change in
the organization. Therefore, it can be said that organizational culture is highly related to the
quality culture.
Quality culture in healthcare
Historical view of quality culture in healthcare
Quality culture helps improve the overall healthcare system of health related companies. From
the past two decades, healthcare professionals were trying to enhance the quality of care in their
healthcare centre. At that time quality culture in healthcare has been originated, and from that
period, its effectiveness, efficiency and wider access have provided a positive impact in the
healthcare centres of the nation. The quality culture of healthcare was started when the central
government policy had been established by the UK National Health services (NHS) (Mannion,
Davies and Marshall, 2005). It is analyzed that after the implementation of this policy, a
structural change has been noticed in healthcare performance. The policy helps in improving the
entire quality of the healthcare system so that people from every culture can get the best
treatment related to their health. Along with this, since the last five years, several policies were
incorporated in the healthcare system that puts an emphasis on the cultural changes of the quality
care in the health care system (Scott et al., 2003).
The policies are developed to provide a positive impact on the healthcare centre, and it
influences the companies to improve their quality culture while treating the patients. The policies
not only help in improving the quality culture of the healthcare system but it also influences the

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companies to improve their performance in comparison to other healthcare centres of the country
where they are operating (Wallace et al., 2015). An important cultural change of the company
has delivered a change in the quality culture aspect of their healthcare system. In the United
States, policy thinking is the major key element that influences the professional to redesign its
health system. An evidence from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
shows that cultural renewal is the significant way of developing a quality culture in the
healthcare system (Zgodavova, Hudec and Palfy, 2017).
Many scholars suggested that cultural change in the healthcare system create issues for the
healthcare professionals, but after developing the concept of quality culture in the health care,
they have analyzed the problems of various people from different cultural background
(Zgodavova, Hudec and Palfy, 2017). Hence, it is seen that with the improvement and changing
of quality care the professionals understand the health problems of people from different culture
and thus takes the necessary steps to solve their issues. Apart from this, after reviewing several
articles, it is noticed that since the past decades after the implementation of several healthcare
policies healthcare culture has changed. It generally emphasizes collaboration, team and group
affiliation and these overall procedures help them to improve the quality culture of their caring
technique (Malhi, 2013). Hence, over that period, it initiated in the healthcare system, and is still
growing by providing a positive impact on the overall services of the healthcare system.
Importance of quality culture in healthcare
In today's environment quality culture plays a major role in the healthcare system for improving
the facilities and treatment procedure of the professional to several people from different
cultures. The quality culture in healthcare has introduced various healthcare policies that
enhances the efficacy and adequacy of the structural reforms (Parmelli et al., 2011). It thus
improves the overall performance as well as the ability of the health professions related to these
centres. Another importance of quality culture is that it improves the professional practice of the
organization by teaching them their working procedure, deep-seated assumptions and values
towards their duties and responsibilities. However, many researchers demonstrated the link
between the culture as well as the quality of the organization and if both of them gets improved
then it can easily enhance the safety care of the firm (Jinhui Wu, Zhang and Schroeder, 2011).