QI Concepts
This simple, four-letter acronym stands for Plan-Do-Check-Act—the foundational cycle used to test changes.
What is PDCA?
his simple root cause analysis strategy involves repeatedly asking the exact same one-word question to dig past the surface of an issue.
What are the 5 Whys?
On a standard QI dashboard or data report, this color is universally used to signal that a specific metric is on track and hitting its target.
What is Green?
Regarded as a founding father of modern epidemiology, this physician famously mapped an 1854 cholera outbreak in London back to a contaminated public water pump on Broad Street.
Who is John Snow?
Boasting 82 moons—including the massive, atmosphere-heavy Titan—this spectacular ringed body is officially the planet with the most moons in our solar system.
What is Saturn?
When we talk about "QI" in our meetings, these two words are what the letters Q and I actually stand for.
What is Quality Improvement?
Because of its unique, skeleton-like appearance, a classic Cause-and-Effect diagram is almost always called by this animal nickname.
What is a Fishbone Diagram? (Also accept Ishikawa diagram)
Sliced up exactly like a dessert, this circular geometric chart is perfect for showing how a whole population or budget is divided into percentages.
What is a Pie Chart?
Known globally as the "Lady with the Lamp," this legendary nurse was also a brilliant statistician who used data graphics to prove that poor sanitation was the primary cause of soldier mortality during the Crimean War.
Who is Florence Nightingale?
Although it is named after a completely different European country, this popular breakfast item consisting of sliced bread soaked in eggs and milk was actually invented in New York by a man named Joseph French.
What is French Toast?
This is the ultimate goal of any QI project: to make our internal processes smoother, faster, and completely free of these
What are Errors (or Mistakes)?
his group activity involves sitting down with colleagues to freely shout out, list, and capture every single potential reason a problem might be occurring.
What is Brainstorming?
This straightforward line graph plots data sequentially over days, weeks, or months to let a team easily see if their numbers are heading up or down over time.
What is a Run Chart? (Also accept Line Graph)
This English physician changed the world in 1796 when he successfully used cowpox material to create the very first vaccine, targeting the deadly smallpox virus.
Who is Edward Jenner?
This iconic, multi-colored 3D puzzle was invented by a Hungarian architecture professor in 1974 to help his students understand spatial relationships, later becoming a massive 1980s pop culture phenomenon.
What is a Rubik's Cube?
In QI, we try not to just fix a problem temporarily; we want to find this type of cause—the real, underlying reason the issue happened in the first place.
What is a Root Cause?
f you want to understand a confusing internal approval process, the easiest first step is to draw one of these—a visual map showing each step from start to finish.
What is a Flowchart? (Also accept Process Map)
If your performance data points are moving steadily and unbroken in one single direction (either all climbing or all falling) for 6 intervals in a row, you have spotted this.
What is a Trend?
This French chemist revolutionized public health by proving that microscopic germs cause disease, developing a process to heat liquids like milk to kill off dangerous bacteria.
Who is Louis Pasteur?
This is the only mammal on Earth that is naturally capable of true, sustained, flapping flight.
What is a Bat? (Note: "Flying squirrels" only glide!)
Before you can tell if a process has actually improved, you need to collect this information first so you have a starting point to compare against.
What is Baseline Data?
In Lean methodology, this five-letter word describes any step, delay, or redundant signature in a process that burns up time or resources without adding any value for the client.
What is Waste?
This specific chart uses vertical bars alongside a line graph, sorting problems from largest to smallest to help teams apply the 80/20 rule and focus on the biggest issues first.
What is a Pareto Chart?
In 1928, Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming returned to his cluttered lab to find a contaminated petri dish where a specific mold was killing off bacteria, leading to the accidental discovery of this first modern antibiotic.
What is Penicillin?
In standard geometry, this specific 8-letter term describes a triangle where all three sides are completely unequal in length.
What is a Scalene triangle?