Background:
Hospitalists have become national leaders in quality and safety, and the Division of Hospital Medicine has spearheaded many safety and quality improvement initiatives in our institution. However, for faculty directly involved in patient care, our institution did not offer formal instruction in Safety, Quality and Efficiency that was readily adaptable to clinical schedules.
Purpose:
Rapid performance improvement at the frontlines is critical for institutions as they begin their journey to become highly reliable organizations. We developed a course in Patient Safety, Quality, and Efficiency to enable both faculty and staff to acquire these additional tools.
Description:
In the Winter and Spring of 2014, the Departments of Hospital Medicine, Quality Improvement and Health Systems Management jointly created the Interprofessional Course in Patient Safety, Quality and Efficiency. We conducted a formal needs assessment by surveying all clinical faculty in our institution. Our planning committee included physicians, nursing, and faculty from both the Quality Improvement and Health Systems Management departments. Based on our needs assessment, we developed a twelve-week curriculum that began in the fall of 2014. The course provides participants with the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to apply systems thinking, quantitative methods, and other qualitative tools to analyze systems, enhance processes and improve problem-solving in health care organizations.
Emphasis is placed on participants’ abilities to work with managers and clinicians to analyze problems, identify possible solutions, communicate with stakeholders, and implement and sustain process improvements. Participants are exposed to project and team management, impact and influence, and change management competencies. Learning methods include group discussion, multi-media, site visits and operational projects. Participants will also complete a capstone Patient Safety/Quality/Efficiency project during the academic year.
The course meets one night per week, for four hours, with ongoing support from course faculty throughout the academic year for the capstone project. Class participants received instruction on the role of the IRB in Quality and Safety projects. Continuing Education credits are available, and strategies for applying the capstone project to Maintenance of Certification requirements fostered a close partnership with the CME department. Dinner and snacks are provided each week.
Our initial cohort was carefully selected from our institution, our sister institution (a county hospital) and community health providers, and consists of 10 faculty from pharmacy, risk management, hospital medicine, transplant surgery, nursing leadership from radiology and rehabilitation medicine, and a governmental breast cancer task force.
Conclusions:
It is our goal that this course provides attendees from all ends of the healthcare spectrum with expertise in Patient Safety, Quality and Efficiency. Through their capstone project and skills learned in the course, our participants will play an active role in rapid performance improvement at the front lines, translating our hospital into a safe and highly reliable organization that delivers the highest quality patient-centric care. By developing this course through collaboration and by sponsoring hospitalists as participants, we hope to solidify our Division of Hospital Medicine as the leader in patient safety and quality improvement in our institution.