Manuscript preparation

Article types and word count

The word count excludes the title page, abstract, tables, acknowledgements and contributions and the references.

Also see detailed instructions for online submission and formatting your manuscript.

Original articles

Articles report research and studies relevant to quality of health care. They may cover any aspect, from clinical or therapeutic intervention, to promotion, to prevention. They should usually present evidence indicating that problems of quality of practice may exist, or suggest indications for changes in practice, or contribute towards defining standards or developing measures of outcome. Alternatively, they should contribute to developing approaches to measuring quality of care in routine practice. The journal is interprofessional and welcomes articles from anyone whose work is relevant, including health professionals, managers, practitioners, researchers, policy makers, or information technologists.

Word count: up to 2000 words.
Tables/Illustrations: up to 6 tables or illustrations.

Short reports

Shorter practice reports, which may not be original in concept but must contain information sufficiently novel to be of importance to other units, are also invited. Articles of a discursive or debating nature, which do not conform to the criteria for original papers given above, will be considered.

Editorials / Leaders

These are written or commissioned by the editors, but suggestions for possible topics and authors are welcome. Please e-mail suggestions to qshc{at}bmjgroup.com.

Letters to the Editor (original research)

Letters containing original research should be submitted via Bench>Press. They may be published in a shortened form at the discretion of the editor, and must be typed in double line spacing.

Word count: up to 400 words.
References: up to 10.

Correspondence

Letters in response to articles published in the Quality and Safety in Healthcare are welcome and should be submitted electronically via the website. Contributors should go to the abstract or full text of the article in question. At the top right corner of each article is a "contents box". Click on the "eLetters: Submit a response to this article" link. Some letters in response to an article may be published in the print version of the journal.

Letters relating to or responding to previously published items in the journal will be shown to those authors, where appropriate.

Word count: up to 400 words.
References: up to 10.

Quality Improvement Reports

Background

Outline of problem, e.g.
1. What was the problem that was identified for study (problem definition)?
2. How was it identified?
3. Why was it a priority?
4. What were the stated objectives of audit?
Outline of context (local and wider), e.g.
1. Relevant details of local hospital/practice, etc
2. Local internal organisation and structures relevant to the problem
3. Wider context of the problem
Outline of staffing arrangements, e.g.
1. How staff work together.

Assessment of problems

Detail of the approach taken with justification, eg
1. Criteria based audit/critical incident/routine monitoring/TQM tools and techniques.
Criteria, standards or guidelines developed, eg
1. Who set them and how they were developed?
2. Were they considered ideal or realistic?
Measurement of problem, eg
1. How was this done?
2. Who did the assessment?
3. How was it analysed?

Results of assessment/measurement

How results were used to understand the problem, eg
1. How results were put into local context
2. Implications for improving the quality of care
3. Implications for change

Strategies for quality improvement/change

Feeding back information to relevant staff, eg
1. How this was done?
2. Why was this approach chosen?
3. Who was included?
4. What was their responses?
Mechanism for change, eg
1. What course of action was taken and why?
2. Was this justified by the results and context?
3. Discussion of ease of change versus likely effectiveness
4. Who was/would be affected by change

Lessons and messages

What changes occurred?
If changes did not occur - why not?
What were the benefits of patients?
Lessons and messages - for your organisation
Lessons and messages - for other organisations
Were benefits sustained?

Guidelines for reporting more extensive quality research

Draft proposed guidelines for stronger quality improvement evidence*

Item	Paper section	Descriptor and topic
1	Title and abstract	Indication that this is a quality improvement article
	Introduction:
2	Background	Current organizational and clinical knowledge about the problem area
3	Problem	Nature and severity of specific local dysfunction or failure
4	Purpose of change(s)	Specific aim(s) of proposed changes, i.e. questions to be answered
	Methods:
5	Setting	Relevant details of geographic location, local organization, staffing
6	Function	Purpose, processes, and activities of department, team, unit, program
7	Intervention(s)	Precise details of initial strategy for intended changes/improvement
8	Measures	Balance of methods used to assess dysfunction/failure and outcomes of changes, including measurement perspective (e.g. patients, staff, administration, cost, etc); methods used to validate measures
9	Analytical methods	Statistical and time series techniques used; specific software (if any)
	Results:
10	Situation analysis	Initial assessment of local context of the care system (e.g. specifics of the patient population, local experience with change etc) and how that assessment helped understand the problem
11	Outcomes	How the initial improvement plan evolved over time (if it did), including alternative change strategies considered and rejected, with reasons; how and why this evolution occurred and who was responsible for it. What effects the changes/improvements actually had on clinical and/or organizational and professional outcomes and processes including benefits, harms, unexpected results, problems, failures.
	Discussion:
12	Summary	Key findings, lessons learned from evolution of changes, outcomes achieved
13	Context	Comparison and contrast of results with the findings of others; broad formal review of the literature is desirable
14	Interpretation	Inferences about mechanisms of changes/improvements, including prior changes, change making in this setting
15	Limitations	Sources of bias or imprecision; factors affecting generalizability, particularly unique features of local seting, and potential confounders; efforts made to minimize and correct for limitations; effect of limitations on interpretation and application of results
16	Conclusions	Implications for practice and further study; plans for maintenance of improvement and for follow up to assess maintenance; next steps

* Although each section of the text of a quality improvement report in the Introduction Methods, Results and Discussion (IMRaD) format (for example, the Introduction) generally needs to contain at least some information about all of the guidelines items listed for that section, individual items from one guideline section are often needed in various sections of the text.

This table has been taken from the article Toward stronger evidence on quality improvement. Draft publication guidelines: the beginning of a consensus project in Quality and Safety in Health Care 2005;14:319-325

Supplements

The BMJ Publishing Group journals are willing to consider publishing supplements to regular issues. Supplement proposals may be made at the request of:

The journal editor, an editorial board member or a learned society may wish to organise a meeting, sponsorship may be sought and the proceedings published as a supplement.
The journal editor, editorial board member or learned society may wish to commission a supplement on a particular theme or topic. Again, sponsorship may be sought.
The BMJPG itself may have proposals for supplements where sponsorship may be necessary.
A sponsoring organisation, often a pharmaceutical company or a charitable foundation, that wishes to arrange a meeting, the proceedings of which will be published as a supplement.

In all cases, it is vital that the journal�s integrity, independence and academic reputation is not compromised in any way.

For further information on criteria that must be fulfilled, download the supplements guidelines (PDF).