Quality circles and their potential application to rural health care in Papua New Guinea.

A quality circle is a group of service providers who meet regularly to solve problems relating to the quality of their work. This is an example of bottom-up rather than top-down management which has found considerable success in the industries of the developed world. This article describes the principles which govern the operation of quality circles, the expected benefits and how best to introduce them. The problems relating to the provision of quality health care in rural areas and the potential application of the quality circle methodology are discussed.