Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Jan 31;20(1):23.
doi: 10.1186/s12875-019-0910-2.

Understanding accreditation standards in general practice - a qualitative study

Tina Drud Due  1 , Thorkil Thorsen  2 , Marius Brostrøm Kousgaard  2
Affiliations

Understanding accreditation standards in general practice - a qualitative study

Tina Drud Due et al. BMC Fam Pract. .

Abstract

Background: Accreditation is a widely adopted tool for quality control and quality improvement in health care, which has increasingly been employed for general practice. However, there is lack of knowledge of how accreditation is received and experienced by health professionals in general practice. This study explores how general practitioners (GPs) and their staff experienced the comprehensibility of accreditation standards and how they worked to increase their understanding of the standards. The study was conducted in Denmark where accreditation was mandatory in general practice from 2016 to 2018.

Methods: The study consists of qualitative interviews with general practitioners and staff from 11 general practices that were strategically sampled among practices set to receive their survey visit in 2017. Participants were interviewed twice; once during the preparation phase and once after the survey visit. GPs and staff were interviewed separately. The interviews were analysed inductively using thematic analysis.

Results: Understanding the requirements of the accreditation standards was a major challenge for the professionals when preparing for the accreditation survey visit. The participants attempted to increase their understanding of the standards in several ways including the use of regional support options and seeking out experts and colleagues. However, participants had mixed experiences with the various support options and many found the sense making work frustrating and time consuming.

Conclusion: The results point to the importance of considering the level of specificity in accreditation standards and how to ensure an organisational set-up that can offer appropriate support to primary care clinics in terms of understanding what is required to meet the standards.

Keywords: Accreditation; General practice; Primary care; Qualitative study; Quality standards.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Authors’ information

All three authors hold a PhD degree, are social scientists in public health, sociology, and political science (respectively) and have several years of experience in qualitative health services research. At the time of this study, TDD was a post-doctoral researcher and TT and MBK were senior researchers.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

According to Danish law (LBK nr 1083) a qualitative study like this does not require ethical approval by the research ethics committee or written consent by the participants. The study was approved by the Danish Data Protection Agency (2016-41-4579) and recommended to general practitioners by the Committee of Multipractice Studies in General Practice (MPU 27–2016).

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests. The study was funded by several third parties (see funding below).

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References

    1. Greenfield D, Braithwaite J. Health sector accreditation research: a systematic review. Int J Qual Health Care. 2008;20(3):172–183. doi: 10.1093/intqhc/mzn005. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Braithwaite J, Westbrook J, Pawsey M, Greenfield D, Naylor J, Iedema R, Runciman B, Redman S, Jorm C, Robinson M, et al. A prospective, multi-method, multi-disciplinary, multi-level, collaborative, social-organisational design for researching health sector accreditation [LP0560737] BMC Health Serv Res. 2006;6:113. doi: 10.1186/1472-6963-6-113. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lester HE, Eriksson T, Dijkstra R, Martinson K, Tomasik T, Sparrow N. Practice accreditation: the European perspective. Br J Gen Pract. 2012;62(598):e390–e392. doi: 10.3399/bjgp12X641627. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. O'Beirne M, Zwicker K, Sterling PD, Lait J, Lee Robertson H, Oelke ND. The status of accreditation in primary care. Qual Prim Care. 2013;21(1):23–31. - PubMed
    1. Buetow SA, Wellingham J. Accreditation of general practices: challenges and lessons. Qual Saf Health Care. 2003;12(2):129–135. doi: 10.1136/qhc.12.2.129. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources