Project Description

Background
Quality Improvement (QI) initiatives can have both positive and negative effects on staff. Stroke healthcare professionals working in acute stroke units, rehabilitation settings, and community stroke services face significant workload pressures, emotional strain, and organisational demands. These factors can contribute to staff burnout, which has been linked to reduced quality of care, poorer patient outcomes, and lower staff retention.

The Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme (SSNAP) is a key quality improvement initiative in the UK focused on stroke care. It serves as the primary source for stroke care data in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. However, while QI initiatives focus on improvements in service delivery, the impact on staff well-being and staff retention sustainability remains underexplored.
This research project aims to explore how staff well-being affects clinical outcomes, investigating the relationship between workforce wellbeing and the quality and effectiveness of patient care. Adopting a mixed-methods approach across a range of stroke settings, the project can combine quantitative surveys assessing well-being metrics (e.g., burnout, engagement, job satisfaction) with qualitative interviews to explore staff perceptions of workload, and organisational support during implementation. The core design and conduct of this mixed methods study will follow Creswell & Plano Clark (2017).

Research Questions
1. How do stroke healthcare staff experience QI initiatives?
2. What impact do QI initiatives have on indicators of stroke workforce well-being (e.g., job satisfaction, burnout, engagement)?
3. What factors moderate the relationship between QI participation and staff well-being?
4. How can QI initiatives be designed or adapted to better support staff well-being?