Early Planning of Small-Scale Surgical Improvement Projects (EPoSSI) Tool

Lay the groundwork for your local quality improvement projects with the new Early Planning of Small-Scale Surgical Improvement Projects (EPoSSI) Tool. Developed with THIS Institute, the EPoSSI Tool is an actionable tool to structure your project, align your team, and avoid the perils of poor planning—the leading reason quality improvement projects fail to achieve their goal. 

About the EPoSSI Tool

Variable quality of surgical care is implicated in avoidable deaths, perioperative complications (problems before, during or after surgery), and suboptimal outcomes. But the impacts of improvement efforts are mixed and sometimes disappointing. This is especially true of local, small-scale quality improvement, which has an important role in supporting better care—but is not always designed or executed well. To address this problem, this tool was developed to guide early planning of small-scale improvement efforts in surgery.

The Nine Domains of EPoSSI

The EPoSSI Tool, designed to be used by local improvement leaders, has been developed through consensus-building exercises with clinicians, patients, and improvement experts. Focusing on the very early stages of project planning, which are known to be crucial to project success, it covers nine domains:

1. Choose the improvement team
2. Detail the problem
3. Develop project aims
4. Choose an intervention
5. Plan implementation of the intervention
6. Plan project monitoring
7. Plan end-of-project decision making
8. Decide go/no go
9. Launch, monitor, finish

The first tool to focus specifically on the early planning phase of a project, EPoSSI outlines key steps, offers suggestions about what to do and what not to do, helps to guide decisions about whether to proceed with projects, and supports preparations for those selected for delivery.

Access the EPoSSI Tool.