Seeing with new eyes: what can general practice learn from the science of improvement?

ability to respond and adapt to the everchanging needs, demands and expectations that they experience in their daily work. Viewed from a historical perspective, the changes that they have been exposed to have been largely incremental in nature and scale. However, social and technical changes in the future are likely to be of a different magnitude to those in the past. Unless GPs develop the capacity and capabilities to deal with these changes, then patient care, the health of communities, and the central role of professionalism will all suffer. The science of improvement, which enables a new way of looking at the world as well as a new knowledge base and set of skills, is presented as a solution to the challenge of dealing with change.