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. Receive our newsletter from a friend? Click here to sign up.
Can you think of an experience where you learned something by challenging the status quo? At Sheffield Teaching Hospitals in the United Kingdom, an improver came up with the idea: What if caregivers could discharge frail elderly patients from the hospital and then assess their ongoing needs in their homes, instead of at the hospital? As you’ll learn in the new video activity, one PDSA cycle led to another, and another.Eventually, 10,000 patients got home 3–4 days faster in one year, saving as many as 40,000 hospital bed days. Watch the video, then use the objectives and discussion questions to lead a conversation about improvement.
Last year in Boston, a hospital patient on a gurney got sucked into the magnetic field of an MRI machine; he escaped only by abandoning the gurney with help from three rescuers. The Boston Globe reported how the near miss prompted the hospital to look at its safety systems. Without placing blame on anyone involved, it identified the following problems: The MRI technician had been working for 10 hours straight, the MRI’s alarm system went off so often that workers learned to ignore it, and providers didn’t feel empowered to stop the machine. Learn more about building safer systems in PS 102: From Error to Harm.
This week, we wanted to share just a few of the recent activities from our hard-working Open School Chapters. Visit the Open School Chapter Map to learn more and get involved.
The University of New Mexico Chapter hosted its fifth event of a six-part series, which focused on using Kotter’s 8-Step Process for Leading Change. They’ll finish the series this month with a session focused on scholarship and publishing of QI and patient safety work.
The University of Windsor Chapter held a patient safety learning series throughout the month of March. Their five events featured local experts from a wide range of quality and clinical areas, including wound care, Lean methodology, chemotherapy, patient experience, and creating a culture of safety.
The Ryerson University Chapter brought more than 70 students together to build practical skills for leading teams. As part of the workshop, each participant completed the Open School course L 101: Introduction to Health Care Leadership.
