The ACQUIRE Forum's closing session on July 11th celebrated frontline healthcare innovation with 26 scientific posters from across Africa, demonstrating that quality improvement is thriving continent-wide through ingenuity and determination.
Pan-African Solutions in Action
Poster presentations revealed remarkable achievements spanning Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi, Cameroon, and additional African countries. Teams shared diverse projects: reducing cardiology clinic waiting times by 50%, improving preeclampsia protocol adherence from 55% to significant levels, achieving zero hospital-acquired infections in Kenyan facilities over 23 months, and strengthening primary healthcare systems that reduced patient turnaround times from 120 to 45 minutes. Other innovations included increasing antenatal care attendance and deliveries through mobile health training, improving blood culture yields from less than 10% positive results, enhancing patient satisfaction through better discharge communication, and achieving 90% client satisfaction in HIV prevention services through recorded audio education sessions.
The Power of Experiential Learning
Three participants from ACQUIRE cohort shared transformative experiences through their participation in quality improvement learning cohorts. The coaching experience proved transformational, helping teams understand not just the tools but how to practically apply them. After 16 weeks of intensive weekly sessions, teams led quality improvement projects in their facilities. “Quality improvement is our day-to-day work,” reflected one participant. “Through this program, we realized that patient experiences and incident reporting challenges are common across all facilities—they’re not unique to private or public settings.”
Leadership Commitment Essential
When teams discovered patients waiting up to eight hours for cardiology consultations, with some patients spending six hours just to see a doctor, leadership responded with full support. “Our board was committed to whatever we could do to solve that problem,” one presenter explained, demonstrating how leadership commitment proves crucial for sustainable change.
Next Up:
Applications will be open for next year’s cohorts as African healthcare workers build sustainable quality improvement cultures continent-wide.