AUA Publishes Textbook on Quality Assurance in Health Care in Armenian

The Center for Health Services Research and Development of the American University of Armenia recently published An Introduction to Quality Assurance in Health Care by Avedis Donabedian.   The text was translated and edited from Dr. Avedis Donabedian's final manuscript, intended and written for the Armenian reader. 

In his more than 40 year career, Avedis Donabedian, MD, Professor of Public Health at the University of Michigan, Charter Member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, was truly recognized throughout the world as “the father of quality assurance in health care.”  Born in Beirut to parents who fled the Armenian Genocide, he grew up in a town north of Jerusalem, studied medicine at the American University of Beirut, and public health at Harvard University. Through his research and writing, he created the conceptual underpinnings of quality assurance in health care, becoming one of founders of this branch of medicine and public health.

The book is a synthesis of his life’s work, which resulted in over a hundred scientific publications and eight books including several classics. According to Donabedian, this book is his legacy, a self-contained and complete summary of his work written for the Armenian reader. It introduces the key principles to defining, monitoring, and assuring quality in health care.

The publication of the textbook is timely. It is impossible to imagine improving the health care system in Armenia without improving quality of services. The science of quality assurance, well developed and deeply rooted in Western countries, is a new concept in Armenia. This book is intended to introduce the science of quality assurance to the practitioner and health planners, serving both as primer and reference guide.

“A genuine, persistent, unshakable resolve to advance quality must come first”, writes the Donabedian, “If that is present, almost any reasonable method for advancing quality will succeed. If the commitment to quality is absent, the most sophisticated of methods will fail.”   The author carried this commitment throughout his life, and wished to see “the ethical imperative that must govern the conduct of all care-givers” in others.  This book was written during the last year of his life for the Armenian health care providers and will play a significant role in educating a new generation of professionals in Armenia.

An Introduction to Quality Assurance in Health Care will soon be published in English by Oxford University Press and plans for a Russian language edition are underway.