How to use it?

There are a number of templates available that can help you to document your PDSA cycles. They vary slightly, but all of them will have plan, do, study and act sections.

Plan:

• What is the objective of this PDSA

• What is your prediction of what will happen?

• What steps/tasks need to happen to set this PDSA up?

Do:

• Describe what happened when you ran the test

Study:

• How did the outcome compare to your prediction?

• Did anything go wrong?

• Did anything go really well?

• What did you learn?

Act:

You can either:

• Adapt – make some changes and try again

• Adopt – no changes are necessary; the change can be adopted as it is

• Abandon – the test was a disaster and the change is no longer an option

In most situations, you will be adapting. What can you do different next time?

Each PDSA should feed into the next. Once you have completed one cycle, use the learning to inform the next one.

Pitfalls:

• Avoid plan – do, plan – do, plan – do. Make sure you work through each of the steps to get the most out of your PDSA

• Only test one change at a time. If you make multiple changes in one PDSA cycle, you may not know which change worked (or didn’t work)

• Do your PDSA as a team! QI should not be a solo sport, get the whole team involved

• Don’t adopt a change too early. Only implement a change when you’re confident that you have done enough testing