Amidst the dynamic landscape of the healthcare industry, ensuring patient safety, healthcare quality, and continuous improvement are key priorities. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) both emphasize the global significance of implementing robust patient safety and healthcare quality management practices across the culture and organizational climate of healthcare institutions.

Course Objectives:

This course is highly interactive and includes group discussions, case studies and syndicate work. It also includes practical exercises that will allow all participants to improve their skills in implementing effective healthcare quality measures that ensure patient safety.

Who Should Attend?

This course is designed specifically for clinicians and healthcare managers who have particular interest in the areas of patient safety and quality within the healthcare environment. This could include surgeons, physicians, clinical professionals, and heads of nursing and any high-potential managers with significant patient safety and quality management responsibilities.

Course Outlines:

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

Make impactful decisions concerning both patient safety and healthcare quality in their healthcare organization
Identify and rectify the variations in medical practice and their implications on patient safety and quality
Use statistical tools to measure patient safety and quality in their department and at an organizational level
Implement quality and patient safety as a core organizational strategy
Create a culture of patient safety and healthcare quality by implementing fundamental concepts and international best practice
The urgent need for patient safety and healthcare quality
Defining patient safety and healthcare quality
The scope of medical errors and preventable harm to patients
The prevalence of errors in healthcare
Poorly designed systems: primary cause of errors
The impact of human factors
Patient safety and healthcare quality – concepts and applications
Definitions of “process” and “outcome”
Quality of care attributes:
Technical performance
Patient centeredness
Amenities
Access
Equity
Efficiency
Cost effectiveness
Impact of “To Err is Human” (Institute of Medicine’s article)
Healthcare quality measurement
Relationship between quality and cost (Donabedian):
Quality costs money
Money does not necessarily buy quality
Some improvements in quality are not worth the added cost
Medical practice and implications on patient safety and quality
Evidence-based care and practice variation (Dr. Wennberg’s studies)
Types of variation:
Process
Outcome
Performance
Effective care
Preference-sensitive care
Supply-sensitive care
Design and evaluation of quality improvement initiatives
Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle (Edward Deming)
Appreciation for a system
Knowledge about variation
Theory of knowledge
Psychology
Statistical tools to measure patient safety and quality
Joint commission characteristics critical to performance measurement
Assumptions on the type of measure: proportion, ratio and continuous variable
The elements of a statistical outlier: impact on patient safety and quality decisions
Consequences associated with the use of poor-quality data or analytical skills
Using data to understand the costs within the pharmaceutical and medical industries
Implementing quality and patient safety as a core organizational strategy
Eight-step process for managing a change in quality (Kotter)
Porter’s focus on strategy to include
Resource allocation
Action plan
Communication plan
Six approaches to empowering employees (Bill George)
Innovation (Rogers)
Relative advantage
Compatibility
Complexity
Trial-ability
Observability
Key steps in clinical change initiatives implementation

Filters