Social Aspects of Change in Perioperative Care and the Importance of Context

Key points

• The importance of context to the fate of healthcare improvement is well acknowledged but inconsistently studied and understood.

• Social scientific methods and theories offer an important resource for understanding contextual and social influences.

• Conceptual frameworks help to provide a structured approach to anticipating and accounting for a wide range of contextual influences in planning, delivering, and evaluating improvement.

• The complexity of the social world means that these influences are not always consistent or predictable; complexity theory offers pragmatic guidance for achieving scientifically informed change.