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The purpose of this paper is to examine quality improvement (QI) initiatives in acute care hospitals, the factors associated with success, and the impacts on patient care and safety.

An extensive online survey was completed by senior managers responsible for QI. The survey assessed QI project types, QI methods, staff engagement, and barriers and factors in the success of QI initiatives.

The response rate was 37 percent, 46 surveys were completed from 125 acute care hospitals. QI initiatives had positive impacts on patient safety and care. Staff in all hospitals reported conducting past or present hand-hygiene QI projects and C. difficile and surgical site infection were the next most frequent foci. Hospital staff not having time and problems with staff prioritizing QI with other duties were identified as important QI barriers. All respondents reported hospital leadership support, data utilization and internal champions as important QI facilitators. Multiple regression models identified nurses’ active involvement and medical staff engagement in QI with improved patient care and physicians’ active involvement and medical staff engagement with greater patient safety.

There is the need to study how best to support and encourage physicians and nurses to become more engaged in QI.

QI initiatives were shown to have positive impacts on patient safety and patient care and barriers and facilitating factors were identified. The results indicated patient care and safety would benefit from increased physician and nurse engagement in QI initiatives.

Despite the diversity of all those involved within the marketing discipline, all have a stake in maximizing the advancement of marketing knowledge. Without a specific analysis it is difficult to reflect on where a field has been or where it might be heading. The purpose of this chapter is to examine who and what marketing scholars have been researching over the period 1977–2002 using content analysis. This chapter provides longitudinal benchmarking of the “inputs” (authors and institutions) and “outputs” (articles) examining the marketing literature in the four major marketing journals: the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Consumer Research, and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.