Major surgery is a vital part of healthcare, but it carries risks of complications that can affect both short- and long-term health. Some of these complications may be preventable, and there are wide differences between hospitals in how often they occur and in how patients are cared for. Currently, the UK has no national system for monitoring complications after major non-cardiac surgery, other than tracking deaths in the short term.

The Perioperative Quality Improvement Programme (PQIP) is a large UK-wide study designed to fill this gap. It collects detailed information from patients undergoing major surgery, including their own views on recovery through patient-reported outcomes, alongside clinical data collected by hospital staff. Longer-term outcomes, such as readmissions and survival, are linked from national datasets.

PQIP provides hospitals with feedback on how well they follow best practice and how their patients are doing, with the aim of driving local improvements in quality and safety. It also creates a rich research dataset that supports many specific studies into surgical outcomes, patient safety, and quality of care.   

This overarching programme is generating multiple specific projects / outputs, which relate to quality and safety in perioperative care.