A3 Management of QI Projects
Johns Hopkins Center for Nursing Inquiry
Excellence in nursing evidence-based practice, quality improvement, and research
What’s an A3?
An A3 is a document used to outline your quality improvement (QI) project. The A3 is a summary of a QI initiative, and establishes a standardized process for teams to follow. Interestingly, the A3 is given that name because of the size of paper it’s printed on. The value of using the A3 is that it includes strategic priority alignment which helps you align your project to the nursing and hospital strategic priorities.
Filling Out the A3
The A3 is a helpful tool because the full project can be found on one document and is an easy way to communicate ongoing project status to teammates, peers, and leadership. The A3 has section headers that require responses.
The timeline guides project work and helps you keep track of interventions. With the timeline, you can monitor outcomes of identified key metric (e.g. fall with injury rates, CLABSI, staff satisfaction) to ensure the project is making a difference.
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A3 Elements
Elements of A3 thinking include: identifying the problem (root cause analyses are a fabulous way to identify the problem), stating the goal, projecting interventions that could get you to the goal, assessing interventions, and either adjusting the interventions or sustaining outcomes based upon the results.
Sounds a lot like plan-do-study-act (PDSA) doesn’t it? We’ve actually used a mini PDSA template within the A3 document!
A final benefit of using the A3 for QI project management is that at the end of a project, you can blow up and present your A3 as a poster presentation.
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About the Author: Holley Farley, BSN, RN is the Nursing Coordinator for Clinical Quality. Holley has served as CUSP champion, safety ambassador and quality improvement champion for the Department of Medicine. Holley has had the opportunity to work on multiple quality improvement projects and utilize project management tools. In her current role, Holley is able to provide data and project management support throughout on quality improvement initiatives.
Vice President, High Reliability
2 年A3s can be very intimidating to those leading improvement efforts in healthcare. Love the idea of a mini PDSA inside the A3! The most important thing is not the document that is completed, but the standardized approach to planning and implementing. Kudos to your team!
Registered Nurse at The Women's Board of The Johns Hopkins Hospital
2 年Nice