Quality improvement and psychiatric research: Can design thinking bridge the gap?

• Published in: British journal of psychiatry Vol. 210; no. 5; pp. 377 - 378
• Main Author: Bhui, Kamaldeep
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01-05-2017
• Subjects: Affective disorders; Artists; Bipolar disorder; Clinical trials; Cognitive ability; Cognitive behavioral therapy; Cognitive-behavioral factors; Columns; Designers; Drugs; From the Editor's Desk; Health care policy; Mania; Mental depression; Mental disorders; Mental health care; Meta-analysis; Patients; Policy making; Popularity; Professional development; Psychiatric research; Psychiatry; Psychoeducational treatment; Qualitative research; Quality; Quality control; Quality improvement; Quality management; Relapse; Research methodology; Systematic review; Uncertainty; United Kingdom > UK; England
• ISSN: 0007-1250; 1472-1465
• DOI: 10.1192/bjp.210.5.377

Qualitative research is a powerful tool to capture, reveal, understand and exploit weaknesses in trials and meta-analyses in order to give a fuller, experience-based perspective that can shape evidence to deliver better care. 1 All research methods have strengths and weaknesses, but aim to provide important and widely applicable information for patient benefit, and to inform quality improvement initiatives. 2,3 Quality improvement methods have escalated in popularity as a key means by which organisations organise their resources to meet patient needs, and implement best evidence. Quality improvement seems more aligned to the approach taken by artists, engineers and designers using a quite different set of thinking processes and stages and levels of uncertainty. 8 Designers are future focused, use research to ideate, develop a prototype and test it, and rapidly adapt in order to find a solution that works in a local context, and meets the needs of multiple end-users: patients, clinicians, managers, commissioners and policy makers. 10 Participatory and empirical research networks can help in design, but the future and solution focus of design thinking methods may offer advantages. A network meta-analysis, a complex method of synthesising evidence from multiple trials using different comparators, 13 evaluated the effectiveness of adjunctive treatments in bipolar disorder: family interventions reduced relapse rates, psychoeducation along with cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT) reduced medication non-adherence, and improved mania symptoms and global function (Chatterton et al, pp. 333–341 ).