Introduction

Plan-do–study–act (PDSA) cycles are the building blocks of iterative healthcare improvement.1 Although frequently regarded as separate from research,2 this quality improvement method remains rooted in the scientific method. The P in PDSA usually stands for ‘plan’ but could just as easily refer to ‘predict’. Each cycle combines prediction with a test of change (in effect, hypothesis testing), analysis and a conclusion regarding the best step forward—usually a prediction of what to do for the next PDSA cycle.3

Too often, however, improvement teams go through the motions of PDSA cycles without really embracing its spirit or applying its scientific method. For example, an improvement team might talk about having used PDSA when in reality the original change idea remained roughly unchanged throughout the project, with no refinements to the intervention or the plan to implement it. Quality improvement rarely works out so smoothly. Even among published studies, which presumably include better than average projects, the application of PDSA falls short, with less than half of studies meeting minimum characteristics of PDSA.4 Sometimes PDSA seems more like a quality improvement catch phrase than it does a recognisable scientific process.

In this paper, we review a recent improvement project5 to draw examples of real-world application of PDSA. This project was not chosen to place it on a pedestal in terms of the improvements achieved but rather to demonstrate PDSA methodology and highlight the benefits of putting it into practice.