But why is that better? Questioning quality for healthcare improvement
Join this webinar from Professor Vikki Entwistle from the School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.
In efforts to improve healthcare, questions about whether and to what extent interventions ‘work’ to bring about intended changes rightly receive critical attention. Questions about why particular changes should count as improvements and be prioritised for action are sometimes less robustly examined.
Drawing on learning from the ‘But why is that better?’ project, this lecture will examine the value judgements that are often implicit in claims about, and activity to improve, healthcare ‘quality’ and its ‘dimensions’ (such as safety, effectiveness, person-centredness, efficiency and equity). Professor Entwistle will illustrate how these concepts tend to be reduced in healthcare policy and improvement work and will discuss the need and potential to retain scope for the influence of more open-ended ideas about ‘good’ healthcare, including to accommodate different perspectives.
Date: Thursday 4th December 2025.
Time: 11am to noon.
Location: Online.
Cost: FREE.
Find out more about webinar from the University of Otago, including how to access the livestream.