What is Total Quality Management?

 

Throughout my career as an NHS Psychologist, I knew of the importance of having standards and trying always to improve these. However, when I was managing the mental health service in Somerset between 1986 and 1989, I was introduced to ideas of Quality Assurance and Total Quality Management which aimed to help organisations continuously improve.

 

When I moved to Cheltenham in 1989, I had the opportunity to work with a number of different clinical services and write about how Total Quality Management was implemented. This came, not only from my experince in the hospitals in Cheltenham, but also from the opportunity to consult with hospital staff in Northern Ireland (Altnagelvin), Newcastle, Manchester, Wolverhampton, Aylesbury and Wales (Powis).