Better care starts with one change
Quality improvement begins with understanding what matters to patients and teams — and finding better ways to deliver care. Whether you're new to QI or leading service improvement, SAM is here to help you understand, improve and share what works in acute medicine.
Discover practical guidance, national benchmarking, learning opportunities and improvement projects from across the acute medical community.
For doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, pharmacists and the wider multidisciplinary acute medical team.
What do you need today?
Wherever you are on your improvement journey, find the guidance, tools and opportunities to help you take the next step.
New to QI?
Learn the fundamentals of quality improvement, understand the Five Steps to Better Care and build confidence with SAM's practical guides.
Start learningRunning a project?
Follow SAM's practical five-step pathway to define your aim, test changes, measure improvement and sustain what works.
Start your QI projectReady to share?
Share what your team has achieved, discover improvement projects from across acute medicine and connect with others tackling similar challenges.
Explore the Improvement ExchangeSAMBA: Understand care. Improve care.
The Society for Acute Medicine Benchmarking Audit provides a national picture of acute medical care. By examining service structures, patient pathways, assessment and outcomes, SAMBA helps participating units understand how their services compare with national benchmarks.
National findings and confidential unit-level reports provide valuable evidence to inform local discussion, identify priorities and support meaningful improvement.
What does SAMBA help us understand?
A national snapshot of care, helping teams make sense of variation in their local services.
Understand the picture
Examine patterns in how acute medical care is organised and delivered.
Compare with purpose
Use national benchmarks to explore variation and identify questions worth investigating.
Turn insight into action
Bring the findings back to your multidisciplinary team and plan measurable change.
The Five Steps to Better Care
Every improvement project starts somewhere. Select a step to see how you can move from understanding a problem to making better care part of everyday practice.
Swipe the steps sideways to explore all five.
Understand the problem
Start by understanding what is happening now, why it matters to patients and staff, and where variation or delays occur.
What you'll do
- Speak with patients, carers and colleagues affected by the process.
- Observe how work really happens, not just how it is meant to happen.
- Review available data and map the current process.
- Identify a problem worth investigating before choosing solutions.
The five steps are a guide, not a rigid sequence. Improvement is iterative: you may return to an earlier step as you learn.
Explore the Quick Guide and WorkbookLearn, practise and improve
Explore SAM's practical guidance, develop your improvement skills and bring colleagues together to learn by doing.
Five Steps Quick Guide
Eight pages introducing SAM's practical approach to quality improvement. An accessible starting point for individuals and teams.
Explore the Quick Guide
Comprehensive QI Workbook
Detailed guidance, worked examples and practical methods to support an improvement project from its first idea to sustained change.
Explore the Workbook
Build a Robot
A facilitated, hands-on QI exercise with timed builds, small tests of change, short videos and a live run chart.
Start the exercise
Multidisciplinary QI learning
Involve the people who understand care delivery — across professions, with patients and carers — to develop and sustain better services.
Explore MDT learningLooking for a practical QI tool? Find SAM's SMART aim builder, PDSA worksheet, project log and reporting templates.
Browse all QI toolsImprovement across acute medicine
Better care comes from understanding our services, listening to patients and learning from one another. Explore SAM's work in patient experience, service pressures and sharing improvement.
SAM Improvement Exchange
Discover how acute medical teams are improving care, from Same Day Emergency Care and AMU flow to education and service development. Explore shared projects, learn what others have tried and connect ideas with your own improvement priorities.
Explore shared projectsSAM-PLER
Bringing patients' experiences into how we understand and improve acute medical care. Learn about SAM's work exploring patient-reported experience measures.
Explore SAM-PLERSAM SitRep
Understanding pressures facing acute medical services, including those not always visible in routine national reporting. Explore SAM's focused service evaluation work.
Explore SAM SitRepNational learning starts with local experience. Understanding what patients experience, recognising service pressures and sharing improvement can help acute medical teams identify and act on what matters.
The people behind improvement
SAM's Quality & Innovation Committee supports national improvement through collaboration, measurement and practical learning. Its work is shaped by the experience of acute medical teams across the UK.
Quality & Innovation Committee
The committee brings together SAM Council representatives, the SAMBA team, resident doctors, consultants and multidisciplinary colleagues to support better care across acute medicine.
Its focus is on helping teams understand their services, develop improvement capability and share changes that make a meaningful difference to patients.
National measurement
SAMBA, clinical quality indicators, patient experience and understanding pressures on acute services.
QI learning and capability
Practical tools, education and support for developing improvement skills throughout an acute medical career.
Supporting improvement
Helping teams develop measurable changes, evaluate their impact and sustain better ways of working.
Sharing what works
Connecting teams, showcasing local projects and supporting presentation, publication and collaboration.
Explore the committee's full remit
- Deliver and develop SAMBA , including national benchmarking and reporting.
- Develop and review clinical quality indicators for acute medical services.
- Support work on patient-reported experience through SAM-PLER.
- Use SAM SitRep to understand service pressures and challenges facing acute medical teams.
- Develop QI education, practical resources and professional learning opportunities.
- Identify national improvement priorities, including Same Day Emergency Care and patient flow.
- Support members with designing, delivering, presenting and publishing QI projects.
- Share improvement projects and collaborate with other SAM committees and external organisations.
Developing improvement capability
SAM has developed two QI training programmes to support practical improvement skills and leadership in acute medicine.
Acute Medics as Improvers
Developing the knowledge and practical skills to take part in quality improvement and test changes in care.
Acute Medics Leading Improvement
Supporting clinicians to lead improvement work, involve colleagues and help changes become part of everyday practice.
Help shape improvement in acute medicine
Have an idea for a national improvement priority, a project others could learn from or an interest in contributing to SAM's Quality & Innovation Committee? We'd welcome hearing from you.