Table 2. SQUIRE: Relevant elements

Planning the intervention

• Describes the intervention and its component parts in sufficient detail that others could reproduce it.
• Indicates main factors that contributed to choice of the specific intervention (for example, analysis of causes of dysfunction; matching relevant improvement experience of others with the local situation).
• Outlines initial plans for how the intervention was to be implemented: e.g., what was to be done (initial steps; functions to be accomplished by those steps; how tests of change would be used to modify intervention), and by whom (intended roles, qualifications, and training of staff).

Results

• Outcomes.
• Explains the actual course of the intervention (for example, sequence of steps, events or phases; type and number of participants at key points), preferably using a time-line diagram or flow chart.
• Documents degree of success in implementing intervention components.
• Describes how and why the initial plan evolved and the most important lessons learned from that evolution, particularly the effects of internal feedback from tests of change (reflexiveness).