ASPIRE for quality: a new evidence-based tool to evaluate clinical service performance

BACKGROUND: Evaluation of clinical performance is important in allied health but without a structured approach, the measuring or monitoring of allied health performance poses a number of challenges. This highlights the need for an evidence-based evaluation tool to assist allied health practitioners in clinical performance evaluation. METHODS: The ASPIRE framework was delivered to local health networks (LHN) in South Australia. Three sites participated in the pilot by providing a team to collaborate with the authors in organising and undertaking a performance evaluation. Evaluation of ASPIRE was conducted via self-administered questionnaire and a semi-structured interview with the evaluation team. Themes were identified from the responses taken from the questionnaire and interviews. RESULTS: All practitioners found ASPIRE useful or very useful and claimed that it helped quite a lot or a lot in the process of undertaking performance evaluation. They all rated ASPIRE as excellent or very good in terms of its appropriateness to their department, ease of implementation and pace of delivery. The interview findings verified the results of the questionnaire and added richness to the evaluation. CONCLUSION: A pilot test of ASPIRE in allied health settings showed that users found ASPIRE easy to use and appropriate in addressing patient outcomes and improved their level of confidence and motivation to evaluate clinical performance. Issues arose in terms of time constraints and identifying suitable performance indicators. Future implementation of performance evaluations using the ASPIRE framework should take these issues in consideration to allow the tool to be refined and be relevant for use.