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Core Requirements
Electives
9 CUs
1 CU
9 CUs total
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
Building on prior coursework that provided a broad overview of the principles and tools of quality improvement in healthcare, this course will provide students with in-depth knowledge of quality improvement (QI) methods, tools, and measures with a strong focus on focus on implementation and sustainment of change. Additional content includes change management, measuring for improvement, sustainment of interventions, QI scholarship, and professional development. Using assigned readings, class lectures, discussion, experiential learning, and in-class exercises, students will apply the methods and tools taught in this course to conduct a quality improvement intervention in their healthcare organization. Students will incorporate concepts related to knowledge-based care, patient-centered care and systems-minded care when developing process improvement changes. Additionally, students will reflect on knowledge gained from the application of these process improvement tools and the challenges of implementing changes in a healthcare organization.
Taught by:
Jessica Hart, MD, MHQS and Patricia Macolino, MSN, RN, CSSBB
Course usually offered in spring term
Activity: Hybrid
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
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 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. The course is offered in both abbreviated (0.5 CU) and comprehensive (1.0 CU) versions. Those taking the comprehensive course will have exposure to material on advanced analytics strategies and hands-on data management. A hybrid structure of in-person days with one virtual day, and optional offers hours is intended to allow flexibility for learners while maximizing beneficial interactions and active participation between learner, instructors, and building the UPHS/CHOP informatics community.
Taught by: Srinath Adusumalli, MD, MSHP, MBMI and Leah Carr, MD
Course usually offered in summer term
0.5 Course Units OR 1.0 Course Units options
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
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.
This course provides learners with the tools to address health and health care inequities using quality improvement methods. Learners will be able to explore the upstream causes of health and healthcare inequities including historical and current day practices routed in racism, sexism, classism, and queer-and-transphobia, among other practices of oppression. This course explores different methods for the purposes of using them in conjunction with quality improvement (QI) frameworks to ensure health equity as a positive outcome of QI efforts. Common QI frameworks and outcome measures will be reviewed with a focus on how to use them in health equity QI work. In addition, the course includes topics of leadership and change management in order to support successful collaborations resulting in health equity. Learners will apply these themes in a final project, engaging an example of an inequitable processes or care to design a QI project with the goal of improving health equity.
Taught by: Renee Betancourt, MD and Tyneshia Harris Howzell, MSHS, LSSGB
Course usually offered spring term only
Activity: Hybrid (Class meets twice monthly)
1.0 Course Unit
The purpose of the quality improvement capstone II course is to provide a culminating experience in the master’s program that requires the integration and application of knowledge attained in prior coursework. Students will build on the skills obtained throughout the masters program and specifically in Quality Improvement in Healthcare Capstone I (HQS990/NURS695) while continuing to lead and experience cycles of improvement work while measuring their results. Students will be required to write a final report for this course.
Taught by: Jennifer Myers MD and Kathy Shaw MD MSCE
Activity: Independent study
Course offered in the fall and spring semesters
1.0 Course Unit
Choose 1 CU
This course is designed to provide a survey of the major topic areas in medical informatics, especially as they apply to clinical research. Through a series of lectures and demonstrations, students will learn about topics such as databases, natural language, clinical information systems, networks, artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, decision support, imaging and graphics, and the use of computers in education.
Taught by: John H. Holmes, PhD, FACE, FACMI
Course usually offered in fall term
Activity: Lecture
1.0 Course Unit
Course directors: Ross Koppel, PhD and Julia Szymczak, PhD
The course will cover five main topic areas: 1. usability, 2. evaluation and measurement of usability, 3. workflow, 4. user-centered design, 5. implementation, and 6. continuing improvement/optimization. Each topic area will incorporate principles, methods, and applications. In the principles section for each topic, the course will clearly define terminology related to the topic area (e.g., What is workflow?), review how key concepts relate to each other (e.g., relationship between human factors engineering and human-computer interaction), and examine the relevance of the topic area in Applied Clinical Informatics. The methodology section for each topic will address qualitative, quantitative, and computational methods used for the design, implementation, and evaluation of health information technology. The applications section for each topic will use case studies based in the topic area to examine the real-world application of principles and methods. The course will cover a wide range of contexts, from homes/communities to organizations to a broader regional scale.
Course usually offered in fall term, during the second half of the fall semester, Wednesdays, 3:30-6:30pm
Activity: Lecture
0.5 Course Units
This course is designed to develop intelligent consumers, managers, and researchers of telehealth and mHealth systems through guided exploration into the components of such systems. The course is designed to introduce many of the challenges facing designers and managers of telehealth/ mHealth and remote health care delivery networks. The spectrum of activity ranging from research into implications of system design for applications that bridge geographic distance to the development of practical applications is considered in both historical context and in case studies. The current status and future trends of this emerging domain are reviewed.
Taught by:
George Demiris PhD, PIK University Professor, School of Nursing & Perelman School of Medicine
Course usually offered in fall term
Activity: Lecture
1.0 Course Unit
This course is an introduction to human systems engineering, examining the various human factors that influence the spectrum of human performance and human systems integration. We will examine both theoretical and practical applications, emphasizing fundamental human cognitive and performance issues. Specific topics include: human performance characteristics related to perception, attention, comprehension, memory, decision making, and the role of automation in human systems integration.
One-term course offered either term
Activity: Lecture
1.0 Course Unit
The word “operations” derives from the Latin “opus,” and opus means work. So by definition, operations is about work. This course offers an introduction to operations management: after completing the course, you will be able to use a systematic approach for analyzing and improving your work in health care settings. This will benefit patients, teams of care providers, and staff. The course includes an examination of inefficiencies resulting from the three system inhibitors: waste, variability, and inflexibility. And it provides strategies for engaging in the ongoing process of reducing these negative impacts without sacrificing quality of care. This course offers an introduction to operations management, examining inefficiencies from waste, variability, and inflexibility and providing strategies for engaging in the ongoing process of reducing these negative impacts without sacrificing quality of care. After completing the course, learners will be able to use a systematic approach for analyzing and improving their work in health care settings.
Course usually offered in the fall term
Activity: Online Course
1.0 Course Unit
Behavioral economics is a relatively new field at the intersection of economics and psychology. This course offers an introduction to behavioral economics and its applications to health and health care. In it, we will examine the key conceptual underpinnings of the field. We will discuss in detail the structure of the choice environment and the ways that people are influenced by how choices are structured. We will consider the design of incentives and various approaches used to “supercharge” incentive programs using behavioral economics principles. We will consider the use of social incentives and social comparisons as a way of achieving better physician performance. We will conclude with a description of how behavioral economics is used in public policy, as well as the interesting question of when a “nudge” becomes a shove.
Course usually offered in the spring term.
Activity: Online Course
1.0 Course Unit
This course presents a survey of the field of implementation science in health. The structure of the course will include two parts. In the first part, we will introduce the field of implementation science, with an emphasis on theory, design and measurement. In the second part, we will focus on applied implementation science which will include examples of research programs in implementation science as well as applying insights of implementation science to practical implementation. An emphasis on qualitative and mixed methods approaches is included. Prerequisite: permission needed from Instructor.
Course usually offered in summer for .5 CU as an institute.
Activity: Lecture
1.0 Course Unit.
The purpose of this course is to provide participants with the tools to design and execute rigorous implementation science research. The Institute will give an introduction to the foundations of implementation science (i.e., terminology, conceptual models and frameworks, study design). Students will also receive an overview of advanced topics including implementation strategies and sustainability. The course directors will cover tips for grant writing and skills development, and time will be spent writing specific aims for implementation science grants. We will also explicitly describe how principles of implementation science can be applied to practical implementation efforts.
This course is designed for students with an interest in health care, medical malpractice, patient safety,
complex tort issues and medical-legal issues. It is ideal for those in the medical field and those pursuing
employment in the medical profession.
This course will provide an insider’s perspective on medical malpractice claims and the medico-legal
considerations that those working in healthcare encounter in their daily work. Covering concepts of
negligence (tort) law to medical liability, students will learn about issues arising from the treatment
relationship between health care providers and their patients.
Course usually offered in spring term.
This seminar course is intended to introduce non-lawyers to legal issues arising in the U.S. health care system and covers the law of doctor-patient relationships while addressing current law and policy challenges related to access to care. The course covers legal issues relevant to special populations, such as patients with mental illness and disability, and patients at the end of life. Finally, the course considers the legal parameters of public health authorities, FDA regulation of pharmaceutical products, and the law of research with human subjects.
One-term course offered either term.
Innovation, defined as a hypothesis-driven, testable, and disciplined strategy, is important to improve health & healthcare. Employing new ways of thinking, such as with design thinking, will help open up possibilities of ways to improve health & the process of healthcare. Incorporating current & emerging social & digital technologies such as mobile apps, wearables, remote sensing, and 3D printing, affords new opportunities for innovation. This course provides foundational content & a disciplined approach to innovation as it applies to health & healthcare. A flipped classroom approach with the in-class component focusing on group learning through design thinking activities. The course is open to undergraduate nursing students as a case study & upper-level undergraduates and graduate students from across the Penn campus. The course provides a theoretical foundation in design thinking & may provide an overview of innovation technology & digital strategies as well as social & process change strategies. To enhance the didactic component, students will actively participate in a design case study. Students will be matched by interest and skill level with teams & will work with community-based organizations, healthcare providers and/or innovation partners. Student teams will meet their partners to identify & refine a health or healthcare problem to tackle. Students will work throughout the semester to create an innovative solution that will be pitched to their community-based organization, healthcare provider, and/or innovation partner at the end of the semester.
Taught by: Marion Leary, RN, MSN, MPH, FAHA
One-term course offered either term
Also Offered As: NURS 357
Activity: Lecture
1.0 Course Unit
Other potential elective course offerings can be found in the Penn Graduate Course Catalog and must be approved.
Fellows are required to attend:
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