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.
For the Scottish health system, improving high stillbirth rates was not about getting obstetricians to improve. Instead, a multidisciplinary improvement team brought together social workers, teachers, housing officers, prison officers, and criminal justice people to work together on the same problem. The results? A series of patient-centered improvement initiatives contributed to an 18 percent reduction in the stillbirth rate in three years. Learn more in the new video and lead a discussion.
A few years ago, one hospital was still using a “bicycle book” — every day, bike commuters recorded their arrival to work in a logbook. Why? Over 70 years, what began as a practical rationing system during WWII had become an arbitrary rule. It was a waste of time, materials, and storage space, as decades’ worth of “bicycle books” were carefully kept. What other wasteful rules did hospital leaders find by asking staff and patients from more than 20 organizations? Dr. Don Berwick and other IHI authors summarized the findings in a new JAMA article, “Breaking the Rules for Better Care.” Learn more about questions that drive innovation in our free course QI 102: How to Improve with the Model for Improvement.
Chapter Updates
Welcome, New Chapters!
Instituto Brasileiro para Excelência em Saúde, Brazil
Full-time students, residents, and graduate trainees who are involved in Open School Chapters or the IHI Open School Change Agent Network are invited to apply for our 8th Annual Student Quality and Organizing Leadership Academy (SQOLA) event taking place July 27–28 in Cambridge, MA. Spend two days with the Open School building skills in quality improvement, leadership, and community organizing to bring home to your Chapters and communities to drive improvement. To help ensure you can join us, we’ll cover meals during the event and your hotel accommodations. Be sure to apply by May 21; we’ll notify all applicants of our decisions by June 5. Questions? Email openschool@ihi.org.