To date, health care quality improvement (QI) has focused on the engagement of executive leadership and frontline staff as key factors for success. Little work has been done on understanding how mid-level unit/program managers perceive their role in QI and how capacity could be built at this level to increase success. We present ethnographic data on the experience of hospital middle managers to consider how the expectations and capacity of their current position might influence QI progress organizationally.
Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute (Dr Dainty), St Michael's Hospital (Dr Sinclair), Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation (Dr Dainty), and Division of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Medicine (Dr Sinclair), University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Correspondence: Katie N. Dainty, PhD, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St Michael's Hospital, 30 Bond St, Toronto, ON M5B 1W8, Canada (daintyk@smh.ca).
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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Accepted for publication: July 4, 2016
Published ahead of print: September 8, 2016
