Patient Safety

In this course, you will be able develop a systems view for patient safety and quality improvement in healthcare. By then end of this course, you will be able to: 1) Describe a minimum of four key events in the history of patient safety and quality improvement, 2) define the key characteristics of high reliability organizations, and 3) explain the benefits of having strategies for both proactive and reactive systems thinking.

This course provides students with a set of tools and methodologies to plan and initiate a Problem Solving or Quality Improvement project. The first module presents methods for selecting, scoping and structuring a project before it is even initiated. It also introduces the project classifications of implementation and discovery. The second module describes the A3 problem solving methodology and the tool itself. Further in that same module, the student is shown tools to identify problems in flow, defects, and waste and to discover causes, brainstorm, and prioritize interventions. Module 3 shows a methodology within the implementation class. These methods are designed to overcome emotional and organizational barriers to translating evidence-based interventions into practice. The fourth and last module looks at one more way to approach improvement projects in the discovery class. These tools are specifically for new, out-of-the-box design thinking.

Safety culture is a facet of organizational culture that captures attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and values about safety. A culture of safety is essential in high reliability organizations and is a critical mechanism for the delivery of safe and high-quality care. It requires a strong commitment from leadership and staff. In this course, a safe culture is promoted through the use of identifying and reporting patient safety hazards, accountability and transparency, involvement with patients and families, and effective teamwork.

Keeping patient safety and quality improvement projects on track, on time, and on budget is critical to ensuring their success. In this course, students will be introduced and given the opportunity to apply a series of tools to guide and manage patient safety and quality initiatives. These include tools for defining what success looks like, developing a change management plan, and conducting a pre-mortem to identify risks for project failure. This course will also provide tools for engaging stakeholders to ensure key players are invested in your project’s success.

Now that you’ve carefully planned your patient safety and quality improvement project, the real work can begin. This course will introduce students to the unique challenges encountered when implementing, maintaining, and expanding a patient safety and quality initiative. Students will learn to apply lessons learned from the 4 E model and TRiP into developing specific aims for their QI project. Additionally, students will develop a plan to address the adaptive and technical challenges in their projects including whether their initiative needs to be submitted to an Institutional Review Board (IRB). Finally, students will develop plans to grow their local QI project into a system-wide project.

In this culminating course in the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Specialization, you will apply the skills you have acquired across the previous six courses to address a realistic patient safety issue confronting Mercy Grace, a 500-bed urban hospital that is part of a larger hospital system. Based on the scenario provided, you will assess the situation and work through the problem using a variety of tools and strategies. You will have the opportunity to identify defects, root causes, and potential mitigation strategies; you will create a project implementation plan for addressing the issue in the form of an A3; you will identify risks of project failure and design a change management plan; you will identify means of converting the project from local to system-wide; and you will identify quality and safety measurements that will be used in evaluating the success of the project’s implementation.