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February 19, 2014
The IHI Open School is an innovative learning community where you can take free online courses, earn certificates, network with peers and experts, and gain confidence and skills in quality improvement and patient safety to change health care.
In conjunction with the Boston University School of Medicine and The Conversation Project, the IHI Open School offers a new online course to introduce students and health professionals to basic skills for having conversations with patients and their families about end-of-life care wishes.
This course, the 22nd in the Open School catalog, is filled with engaging video interviews, thought-provoking statistics, interactive exercises, and a collection of valuable tools and resources related to this important topic. Within the four lessons of the course, you’ll have the opportunity to develop skills to have conversations with patients and their families about their preferences for care at the end of life. As part of developing these skills, the course also invites you to “have the conversation” yourself, with a family member or other loved one.
Physicians, nurses, and pharmacists in the United States will earn two hours of continuing education credits upon completing the course.
In a new article in Dimensions of Critical Care Nursing, two future leaders in the nursing industry reflect on their experiences at last summer’s IHI Open School Student Quality Leadership Academy.
Katharine N. Cutting, BSN, SN, a senior nursing student at Boston College, and Cattleya May, MS, FNP-BC, now a pediatric otolaryngology nurse practitioner at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, share thoughts on the two-day event that brought together 150 interprofessional students and residents to learn about leadership. Cutting and May heard from expert faculty, including Marshall Ganz, PhD, MPA, and had the chance to connect with like-minded young leaders from around the world.
“I believe that with a larger community effort,” Cutting writes, “we can begin to move the mountains we face in health care.” Read the full journal article here.
Some of you may have already seen this NPR article (it’s from January), but we found it so valuable that we’re reading it again this week. “Doctors still value speed and technical accuracy,” the author writes, “but we also do more to consider the quality of care we give and whether patients are satisfied with it.” He goes on to relate five communication skills research shows significantly impact patient satisfaction — including one that interns miss more than 90 percent of the time. Read more here.
Community Updates
Welcome, New Chapters
MCPHS University, Boston, MA, US
San Jorge Children's Hospital, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Whether you're planning informational sessions to recruit new members or planning an expert speaker panel, the IHI Open School team understands that finding the funds to host Chapter activities can be difficult. That's why each semester, we set aside a small amount of funds to assist Chapters, such as yours, in the important work you’re doing. Share your planned activities for the spring semester on this form to be considered for event sponsorship. The deadline to submit your Chapter’s event is March 5.
Wondering how you could make use of Chapter event sponsorship? Using their funding awarded last semester, the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) Chapter held an interprofessional symposium on February 5 with more than 30 students in attendance. The UCLA Chapter used the symposium to bring together students from the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Public Health, and Dentistry to network and learn about ways students can get involved with quality improvement projects at UCLA Health. To show their support, Deans from the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health spoke to the audience about what quality improvement means in their professions. Building on the success of their first large event, the Chapter Leaders plan to hold quarterly meetings with structured opportunities for students to participate in quality improvement activities in the health system. Congrats on your hard work, UCLA Open School Chapter!
Dentistry to network and learn about ways students can get involved with quality improvement projects at UCLA Health. To show their support, Deans from the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health spoke to the audience about what quality improvement means in their professions. Building on the success of their first large event, the Chapter Leaders plan to hold quarterly meetings with structured opportunities for students to participate in quality improvement activities in the health system. Congrats on your hard work, UCLA Open School Chapter!
