10 June 2025
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has opened its annual Quality Improvement Programme (QIP) Topic Competition, inviting members to submit ideas which aim to enhance the care of patients attending A&E.
Launched today (10 June 2025), the 2028 – 2033 QIP competition will see the winning candidate’s idea developed into a fully realised national QIP.
This research, for Type 1 Emergency Departments are designed accurately measure and report the care patients are receiving to drive action to improve the quality of Emergency Care in the UK.
This is the fourth time RCEM has run the competition, which has seen three topics, focused on patient care concerns, tackled directly at a national level.
The first winner of the QIP competition was Dr Jonny Acheson, an Emergency Medicine Consultant living Parkinson’s, who focused on how time critical medications are dealt with in practice when patients come to ED and how clinical methods and patient safety can be improved.
Across the UK, 136 Emergency Departments took part in the first year of the programme (2023-24), collecting and analysing data for people living with Diabetes and Parkinson’s, taking insulin and a drug called levodopa.
The initial findings of the TCM QIP, published in April this year, found more than half of eligible patients (53.4%) taking TCM weren’t identified within 30 minutes of their arrival in ED.
RCEM’s President Elect, Dr Ian Higginson, who leads on Clinical Quality for the College said: “At the heart of RCEM’s Quality Improvement Programme is our patients.
“It is vital that we understand what level of care they are experiencing if we are to improve clinical standards across the UK – especially against the backdrop of the Urgent and Emergency Care crisis.
“To our members – you are on the shop floor every day and have unique insight into what needs to be improved and how it can be improved – that is why we launched this competition.
“If you are passionate about an area of Emergency Care that you believe needs to be prioritised, please do submit a topic idea to our QA&I Committee.
“If selected, you could see your topic become of national interest and potentially have a positive impact on thousands of patients’ lives.”
Topic ideas should be submitted via the QIP competition’s online form here, with the deadline closing at 11:59pm on 25 July 2025.
All the submissions will be reviewed by the Quality Assurance and Improvement (QA&I) Committee Co-Chairs Simin Nikou and Dale Kirkwood, along with a panel of its members.
Winners will be announced during the week commencing 18 August 2025.
Other topics that have been selected as a QIP include:
All details of RCEM’s current and past QIPs can be found on our Quality Improvement page.
