We celebrate Donabedian Week in honor of the birth of Professor Avedis Donabedian!

This week we are celebrating Donabedian Week in honor of the birth of Professor Avedis Donabedian, pioneer of quality in health care, on January 7, 1919. During the week we will be updating this page with detailed information about Professor Avedis Donabedian, complementing what we disseminate through our networks.

Twitter: Donabedian Institute (@Inst_Donabedian) / X (twitter.com)

Linkedin: (61) Instituto Universitario Avedis Donabedian | LinkedIn

"The responsibility for quality belongs to us all and we all have to play our legitimate role to protect and expand it" - Avedis Donabedian

01/13/2024

Commentary – Who is responsible for managing the quality of care? Rashad Massoud

In this article Professor Donabedian analyzes a key point in the management of healthcare quality: who is responsible for it. The answer is simple: it's everyone's responsibility!

Article - Quality in health care: whose responsibility is it? Donabedian A.

"The seven pillars on which quality is supported, its seven faces or the seven attributes by which it is recognized and judged are: effectiveness, effectiveness, efficiency, optimization, acceptability, legitimacy and equity" - Professor Avedis Donabedian

12/01/2024

Commentary – The balance between individual preferences and social needs in healthcare. Beatriz Zurita

In this article, Avedis Donabedian helps us understand the responsibilities of healthcare staff towards the patient in modern health systems. It describes the seven attributes of quality through which we can identify it.

Article - The seven pillars of quality. Donabedian A.

Professor Avedis defines quality as "a precise adaptation of attention to the particular needs of each case"

11/01/2024

Commentary - Criteria and methods for evaluating the quality of care. Julio Frank

This article discusses the definition and criteria of quality. It transcends a repeated concern for a real democratization of the quality of care, seen in terms of its contribution to the duration and quality of life.

Article - The Quality of Medical Care. Donabedian A.

Professor Avedis Donabedian introduced the model of structure, process and result as a conceptual framework to evaluate and improve the quality of medical care.

10/01/2024

Commentary – Structure, process and result of health care. Susan Lorenzo

This article constitutes one of the milestones in the history of the evaluation of the quality of healthcare, introducing one of the first definitions of the healthcare process, as a continuum that breaks down into: structure, process and result. Throughout the work Professor Donabedian describes in detail and extensively documented the methods used to estimate the degree of quality of health care, proposing some recommendations for the future.

Article - Evaluation of the quality of medical care. Donabedian A.

Our President, Dra. Rosa Suñol, had the honor of interviewing Professor Avedis Donabedian and set the trend.

09/01/2024

Our President, Dra. Rosa Suñol, had the honor of interviewing Professor Avedis Donabedian and marked a trend with reflections such as "an important debate and a great effort of investigation and reflection is necessary to reach an agreement on who does what in the field of quality, avoiding duplication and unnecessary pressure on clinicians"

The full interview

Biography

08/01/2024

Avedis Donabedian (1919-2000) was quite a character. His works in the field of Public Health are a gigantic contribution and in the field of quality they will represent the turning point in the development of an incipient science. But Prof. Donabedian was many things more: a mentor and guide for many, a rigorous intellectual analyst, in love with language and forms of expression (he spoke and read more than 7 languages), a poet and above all a man of extraordinary human quality, concerned about the problems of his friends and the world and who built bridges between diverse trends and cultures. Of Armenian origin – his parents fled the genocide through the desert – he was born in Beirut (Lebanon) and settled in Jerusalem. A new war took him to the United States, first to Harvard and later to Ann Arbor (Michigan) where he developed his entire career at the School of Public Health. His contribution was basically conceptual. Based on the analysis of published works, he established the famous classification of quality methods (structure-process-result), the definition of quality, the relationship between process methods and results, the systematization of criteria, very important reflections on responsibility for quality improvement, the different approaches to manage it, etc. In addition, third in two of the most important controversies of the century (the debate between process methods and results and the controversy between quality guarantee and total quality) with crucial articles that synthesized the positions and allowed progress. One of his most constant contributions is the reflection of the ethical component that defines relationships in the field of quality. Discussion not only of ethical responsibility with patients, but of that which affects individual professionals, professional associations, managers and administration, providing in all cases a deep and global vision.