The road to ISO 9001:2000

The Breast Imaging Unit at York Hospital NHS Trust is the base for both the North Yorkshire Breast Screening Service and the local Symptomatic Breast Imaging Service.

In compliance with National Health Service Breast Screening Programme guidelines a quality management system has been in place for many years, but as a unit we felt that we could improve the existing quality management system while at the same time improving the delivery of service and care to our clients, patients and partners.

In order to do this we evaluated different management systems and came to the conclusion that our way forward was to try to develop a system that would stand up to the rigorous standards of ISO9001:2000.

It was a challenge. This poster outlines those challenges, the hurdles, and the changes to our unit while we travelled the road to ISO 9001:2000 accreditation.