INTERVIEW GUIDE – Managers/Program Directors (QI Ethnography)

[Turn on Tape]

Preamble

Thank you for agreeing to speak with me today. As you know I am doing research on the QI journey here at this hospital as part of my post-doctoral fellowship, so I am speaking with people in all different roles within the hospital from the CEO to the guys in the boiler room in order to understand how QI at this hospital works, from everyone’s perspective. Is that what you thought this was about? If no, clarify.

So, just a few things to cover before we start: This is a purely voluntary activity. If at any point you feel uncomfortable and wish to end the interview, you are free to do so. I take the issue of confidentiality seriously. No personal information about you will be noted or shared with any colleagues, hospital leadership or other organizations. I usually tape the interview because I can’t write fast enough to capture everything you say, however I am the only one that will hear the tapes afterwards and the audio files are destroyed once they are transcribed. Is this okay with you?

You and I are the only ones that know I am speaking to you today. Your name or your position will not appear anywhere in the written transcripts of, or reports concerning this work. Any identifying information mentioned during the conversation will be removed or de-identified within the transcript.. I have no vested interest in whether you think QI at this hospital is good, bad or ugly so there are no “right” answers and I hope you will feel free to be as open and honest as you would like to be. I genuinely want to hear your perspectives. The interviews generally have been lasting about 45 minutes, but I am happy to stay as long as you feel like talking. Do you have any questions or concerns about the interview? If not, let’s begin….

[The questions are not numbered purposefully as they are are meant as guides only with potential probes indicated underneath. The order of the conversation is not important but it is important to touch on each of the topic areas where appropriate. Let the interviewee guide the conversation and insert questions when the transition seems appropriate or follow a totally different line of questioning if they bring up something we didn’t think of that seem of interest.]

·  Let’s start with a big open question: when I say the words “quality” and “quality improvement”, what, comes to mind for you in your role as a [manager/director]: good, bad, ugly?

·  What is the engagement like in quality at the frontlines with your group or is it, sort of, dependent on the initiative?

·  Tell me a little bit about managing quality as part of your role.

o  Human resources

o  Balancing the number of projects/initiatives

o  Strategic management vs. project management

·  As a [unit manager/program director] you must have to manage from the bottom, up AND the top, down. How does that happen day to day?

·  Often in QI there are competing “priorities” – what does that mean to you and how do you handle it?

·  How would you describe your ability to provide input at a strategic level from your position?

·  Can you tell me about the PRR process?

·  What are your thoughts on data and outcome reporting?

o  Do you find that doing that kind of stuff takes up a lot of your time?

·  Do you ever think we ever get to the point where we’ve hit an outcome or a we’ve made it to our goal, and we were able to sustain that and then move on?

·  How would you describe the organizational support around quality here at XXX?

o  Corporate resources? Quality Improvement Office, Patient Flow Team, etc

·  A) Have you had any formal training in QI/QI Management? [Yes/No]

B) As a [insert role], do you feel prepared to manage quality in terms of training or education?

o  Graduate training, course, online, other organizations, etc?

o  Internal Fellowship? CQuIPS at UofT?

·  We often promote people to a manager or director role based on certain job related criteria – how does QI management and reporting fit into that now?

·  What’s something that we do really well here in terms of our approach to quality?

·  If you had a magic wand and could wave it and change a few things to make life easier, what would those things be?

·  Is there anything you would like to add that we haven’t talked about today?

[Shut off tape]

Thank you very much for talking to me today, I really appreciate your time and thoughtful input on this.

If you happen to think of anything else that you forgot to say, please feel free to email me and I would be happy to add it to the transcript of our conversation.

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