Change management, mapped to PDSA
Why good Quality Improvement needs Change Management
A sound process fix can still fade within months when the care team drifts back to the old way. Change management is the discipline that helps make your improvement stick. PDSA already works in small, repeated experiments: test, learn, adjust, test again. Change management fits that rhythm. Each cycle is a chance to test the people side too, through sponsorship, communication, training, resistance management, and reinforcement, and to learn what it takes for the new way to become simply how work is done. This page shows where those tools fit in each step.
Change management is the people side of improvement: who sponsors the change, what staff need to hear and learn, where resistance will come from, and what keeps the new way in place.
Part of the Quality Improvement modules. See how they work → Using Six Sigma? Open the DMAIC map →
Built for healthcare teams
Small teams
The sponsor, the process owner, and the affected staff often overlap. These tools work when the same people fill several roles.
Lots going on
Regulatory, EHR, and staffing changes land on the same teams at the same time. Timing and change load get their own tools here.
Trusted voices
The charge nurse or lead clinician everyone listens to moves adoption more than a memo. Several tools are built around finding and equipping those people.
Each step below lists the change management tools that fit it best. Tap a card to see more on that topic.
Plan
Design a small test of change. Decide what you will try, who it touches, what you predict will happen, and what adoption will look like.
Questions to ask
- Who does this test touch, and what do they need to hear and learn before it starts?
- What do we predict adoption will look like by the end of the test, in numbers?
- Who is the sponsor for this test, and what will they visibly do while it runs?
Do
Run the experiment with the people who do the work, and watch how the change actually lands.
Questions to ask
- Are people hearing about this from their own leader, or from the project team?
- Are we watching what actually happens, or waiting for the data?
- What surprised us, and are we treating it as information or as resistance?
Study
Compare what happened with what you predicted, for the process and for the people: who used the change, who did not, and why.
Questions to ask
- How did adoption compare with our prediction, and why the difference?
- Who used the change, who didn't, and what was different about them?
- When people didn't use it, was that skill, belief, workload, or timing?
Act
Adopt, adapt, or abandon. Carry what you learned into the next cycle, and make what worked standard practice.
Questions to ask
- If we adopt, who owns the new way by name, and what routine keeps it visible?
- If we abandon, have we told the people who tried it why, so they'll try the next one?
- What did we learn about adoption this cycle that we'll carry into the next?
Bring this into your improvement program
We build self-paced change management modules that sit alongside the PDSA cycles and Lean Six Sigma belt programs your teams already run. If your organization runs one, let's talk about layering these in.