Introduction
This book on Total Quality Management (TQM) is interesting because it is "zone specific". That is to say its target audience are those involved in the healthcare industry in Africa. As its subtitle states: "A comprehensive Strategy Toward the Implementation of an Effective and Efficient Healthcare Delivery System in Africa".[1] That is obviously a major challenge and we are not sure that TQM alone can solve the problem, but doubtless it can help.
As the author explains in the Preface to the book:
"Total Quality Management is achieved through employee empowerment in decision making, the use of facilitated teams in the organization, individual responsibility for products and services and a strong customer service orientation, working from a set of values envisioning a mission, maintaining commitment, sustaining motivation, prioritizing tasks, cooperating with others, communicating effectively and seeking to continuously learn and grow.[2]
In Africa, the health care industry is plagued by a catalogue of social, economic, political, cultural, structural and organizational problems, needing some reform, restructuring, reorganization and reengineering through the introduction and implementation of quality management concepts such as TQM. This will involve intensive and extensive education and training of all medical support personnel on effective and efficient as well as qualitative health service delivery to communities. This will also require reorganization and restructuring of existing medical institution, policy and system changes on major healthcare delivery systems in the continent."[3]
However, African Healthcare problems aside, and most other developing countries for that matter, Morfaw's book presents a valuable, simplified, description of what TQM is and what it involves. As you can see from the Book Structure in the next section, this is provided in Chapters 2, 3 and 4, together with an implementation plan specific to health services detailed in Chapter 8.
1. Morfaw, J. N., Total Quality Management, University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland, USA, page i
2. If you can get your mind around that - and what it means in practice - you are doing well!
3. Morfaw, J. N., Total Quality Management, page xiii
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