What is Program Theory and Why Is It Important to Perioperative Quality Improvement?

Mind the gap.

“…There are thousands of publications that stress the importance of theory in every scientific field but some of the more pertinent ones that focus on mental health include its role in developing evidence-based interventions, driving innovation, and providing a base for program evaluation and quality improvement. With respect to program evaluation, I want to refer to my early work on what I called program theory (Bickman, 1987(Bickman, , 1990 which has been recognized as critical to not only evaluation but program development across a wide variety of fields as illustrated for example by Ko and Dixon-Woods (2023). Scientific progress requires the valid accumulation of knowledge.…”