Abstract for:NICU Quality Improvement and Its Context: A Causal Map Involving Feedback & Time Delays

When the design of quality improvement (QI) efforts accounts for organizational context, those efforts are more likely to succeed. Stakeholder interviews were used to create a causal loop diagram to identify and describe causal links involving context and NICU QI interventions that impact quality outcomes.   Interviews were conducted with NICU employees as well as leadership from the hospital and from the health system (n=20). This NICU is found inside a children’s hospital that is part of a larger health system. The CLD (our conceptual model) identifies contextual factors both internal and external to the NICU as leverage points for successful QI. Our next step is to use this CLD as a blueprint to develop a simulation model exploring this problem.