The Heroes and Martyrs series: job descriptions for health care quality improvement professionals?

T his issue brings the 14th in the ‘‘Heroes and Martyrs of Quality and Safety’’ series. More are to come. With a new editor of this journal on board, it is a good moment to define the content of the series. It is about people—present and past—who have found an opportunity to improve health, their efforts to carry out the needed improvements and to measure the results. These people are patient centred, careful with their evaluations, and committed to making changes. Not all of them succeed and some suffer the consequences, thereby becoming martyrs and our heroes. Each story highlights some aspect of the tryptic of quality improvement which is also referred to as customer mindedness, statistical mindedness, and organizational transformation. These heroes are not just compassionate caregivers, or researchers whose story ends with publication, or health administrators and change agents. Our quality heroes undertake all three aspirations and need a combination of skills to actually improve quality.