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Background  COVID-19 has impacted the context in which healthcare staff and teams operate and this has implications for quality improvement (QI) work. Contrary to the usual ambivalent relationship staff have with QI work, there have been examples of unprecedented staff engagement in implementing rapid changes during the pandemic indicating a change in important underlying factors that impact staff involvement in QI. The purpose of this study is to explore staff perspectives about how experience and skills of QI methods supported them in implementing innovative practices during COVID-19.    Methods  This is a qualitative narrative study based on narrative interviews to collect healthcare staff stories of implementing rapid change. The stories were identified through social media (Twitter) and a national health magazine issued by the Irish health service. Twenty staff members participated in the interviews. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and anonymised. A four-step thematic analysis was conducted.    Results  The analysis revealed the transformational journey of healthcare staff from the initial shock and anxiety caused by COVID-19 to making sense of the situation, implementing rapid changes, and acknowledging COVID as a learning experience. Six themes were evident from the analysis: COVID anxiety and fear, emotional supports and coping mechanisms, person-centric changes, COVID as a ‘forcing function’ for change, a collective way of working and looking back and thinking ahead.    Conclusions  While most rapid changes during COVID-19 did not represent a systematic and explicit QI application, QI principles were evident throughout the stories and actions taken, including making small changes, testing changes, learning, reflecting as a team, and improving. Many staff members were able to retrospectively identify the relevance of QI principles. COVID-19 eliminated some traditional barriers to change leading to efficient solutions, thus highlighting a need to sustain these positive changes into routine practice to develop an adaptive healthcare system receptive to QI.    Supplementary Information  The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-021-07297-0.

Exploring healthcare staff narratives to understand the role of quality improvement methods in innovative practices during COVID-19