Usually we focus on the negative side of what happens in healthcare, looking for errors, mistakes and lapses. Excellence reporting is a system and philosophy that aims to focus on the positive side instead. It is opposite and yet complimentary to error reporting. Excellence, is difficult to define, but we know it when we see it. Learning from excellence attempts to capture reports of excellence and determine what went right, why it went right and how we can incorporate lessons into our everyday practice. To re-engage and show appreciation to staff we aimed to introduce Learning from Excellence into the Medical HDU in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. By June 2017 we aimed to capture ten reports each month with follow up and appreciative enquiry on reports each month. We aimed to use the results of appreciative enquiry to identify areas to develop as further improvement projects.
