Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA)

The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle is a practical way of applying scientific thinking in complex social and operational environments. It is comprised of four elements that guide its user or team in a disciplined fashion toward uncovering evidence to support their theories or practice improvement. The PDSA cycle begins with articulating the change and recording predictions about what we expect will happen (plan); attempting to change and documenting what in fact did happen (do); comparing the results to the predictions (study) and deciding on what to do next (act). PDSA cycles can be applied along a continuum of scale to uncover whether individual ideas for change have utility in practice in one small corner of the system or whether an entire complex theory has value in producing a stated aim or outcome.