Certificate in Healthcare Quality and Safety

Healthcare delivery is complex and constantly changing. A primary mission of leading healthcare organizations is to advance the quality of patient care by striving to deliver care that is safe, effective, efficient, timely, cost effective, and patient-centered. The goal of this inter professional course is to provide students with a broad overview of the principles and tools of quality improvement and patient safety in health care while also guiding them through the steps of developing a quality improvement project. It will provide a foundation for students or practicing clinicians who are interested in quality improvement and patient safety research, administration, or clinical applications. As part of this course, students will design and plan for a real quality improvement project in their area of interest within healthcare using the methods and tools taught in the course.

Taught by:

Jennifer S. Myers, MD and Heather Greysen, PhD, CRNP

Course usually offered in fall term

Also Offered As: NURS 612

Activity: Lecture

1.0 Course Unit

This blended online/in-classroom graduate level course integrates principles of systems thinking with foundational concepts in patient safety. Utilizing complexity theories, students assess healthcare practices and identify factors that contribute to medical errors and impact patient safety. Using a clinical microsystem framework, learners assess a potential patient safety issue and create preventive systems. Lessons learned from the science of safety are utilized in developing strategies to enhance safe system redesign. Core competencies for all healthcare professionals are emphasized, content is applicable for all healthcare providers including, but not limited to, nurses, pharmacists, physicians, social workers and healthcare administrators, and may be taken as an elective by non-majors.

Taught by: Susan Keim, PhD, MSN, MS, CRNP and Kathy Shaw, MD, MSCE

Course usually offered in spring term

Also Offered As: NURS 650

Activity: Lecture

1.0 Course Unit

The purpose of the quality improvement capstone is to provide a culminating experience in the program that requires the integration and application of knowledge attained in pre- and co-requisite coursework. The Capstone will build upon prior coursework that provided a broad overview of the principles and tools of quality improvement and patient safety in healthcare with a focus on implementation and sustainment of change. Students will apply this knowledge through completion of a mentored quality improvement project in a healthcare organization. In collaboration with faculty and health organization advisors, students will identify a quality improvement opportunity and use improvement methodology to describe the extent of the problem, analyze the current system, design tests of change (countermeasures), implement at least two plan-do-study-act cycles, and measure results. Students will also reflect on lessons learned and process of change.

Taught by: Jessica Hart MD and Patricia Macolino RN, MSN

Activity: Hybrid

Course offered in the spring semester only.

1.0 Course Unit

This course provides a national perspective on the history and evolution of the US healthcare quality movement and the six components for high quality healthcare: safe, timely, effective, equitable, efficient, and patient-centered. Using a mix of local and national leaders in the field, the complexities of quality and the scientific basis for understanding the measurement of quality will be explored, including exposure to quality measures from a variety of organizations and measure comparison sites and the merging of quality outcomes with evolving reimbursement paradigms and models. The association between quality and safety and healthcare economics, regulation, accreditation, information technology, and population health will also be covered.

Taught by: David Horowitz, MD and Neha Patel, MD,MS

Course usually offered summer term only

Activity: Lecture

1.0 Course Unit

This four-day intensive graduate institute applies core clinical informatics concepts in the context of quality improvement and patient safety initiatives. Content covered addresses foundational theories, frameworks, and policies of clinical informatics relevant to quality improvement and patient safety as well as practical application of informatics tools relevant to quality improvement efforts and local governance structure. Learners will be exposed to a variety of informatics leaders from across both the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. A hybrid structure of two full, in-person days with two half, virtual days with optional offers hours is intended to allow flexibility for learners while maximizing beneficial interactions between learner, instructors, and building the UPHS/CHOP informatics community

Taught by: Srinath Adusumalli, MD, MSHP, MBMI and Leah Carr, MD, MSHP

Course usually offered in spring term

0.5 Course Units

This course provides an overview of quantitative and qualitative methods for evaluating quality improvement and patient safety (QI/PS) efforts in healthcare. Through the use of assigned readings, discussion, and assignments, students will develop skills to critique evaluations of existing QI/PS projects and design a robust evaluation of a healthcare improvement initiative. Topics include the principles of good measurement, development of performance measures, intermediate and advanced concepts in statistical process control, and the research methods used in the evaluation of QI/PS interventions.

This class meets weekly both online and in person.

Taught by: April Taylor, MS, MHA, CPPS, CPHQ

Course usually offered in fall term

Activity: Lecture

1.0 Course Unit

HQS 6400 Coaching in Quality Improvement Work

The purpose of this course is to provide participants with the skills and tools to successfully guide learners in experiential quality improvement (QI) work in healthcare while developing a network of educators with similar roles. Students will be placed into groups based upon their level of experience and confidence in teaching and advising learners in this field. Both groups will discuss topics such as QI project selection, using QI frameworks to structure teaching sessions, key organizational and team factors, providing feedback, common teacher and learner pitfalls in QI, and many others. This will be a blended course with three in- person workshops and monthly asynchronous online educational components with assignments.”

Taught by: Elena Huang, MD, Jennifer Myers, MD, Neha Patel, MD, MS

Course usually offered in fall term

Activity: Hybrid Course

0.5 Course Units

This six-week course will help develop core skills for emerging leaders of safety and quality in healthcare systems.  The course will include a combination of self-assessments, encounters with exemplary leaders, group exercises, individual activities and readings that will provide the participants with a range of experiences designed to further student’s own leadership journey.

Taught by: Daniel Hyman, MD, MMM

Course usually offered summer term only

1.0 Course Unit.

Course description coming soon.

Course Objectives:

• Identify current inequitable health outcomes within historic and current systemic and structural inequalities in healthcare
• Apply quality improvement tools, with an equity lens, to address and/or prevent health and healthcare disparities
• Develop the leadership knowledge, skills and attitudes to lead health equity and change
• Design a healthcare quality improvement project with an equity lens

Taught by: Renee Betancourt, MD & Tyneshia Harris Howzell, MSHS, LSSGB

Course usually offered spring term only

1.0 Course Unit.