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.
As a provider, the last thing you want to hear when you’re halfway out the door toward your next appointment is, “Oh, by the way, I’ve got chest pain.” To avoid this frustrating (and inefficient) situation, a short video featuring Dr. Calvin Chou demonstrates how providers can elicit all patient concerns upfront, at the beginning of the visit, and use what they learn to build a shared agenda.
Lita Cameron, a medical student at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, recently took a course called Social Pediatrics. It was a lesson in the overwhelming challenges of poverty: Cameron met a refugee who was feeding her family on $200 a month, a teenage mother raising her baby in a shelter, and another young mother who was losing weight after sacrificing her own food for her family. In a fascinating piece in The Toronto Star, Cameron argues that providers can and should take action to respond to families’ social needs, in addition to their medical conditions. “Medical schools teach a lot about patient-centered care,” Cameron said. “But there’s a need for more exposure to the daily struggles of disadvantaged families.” Learn more in our course TA 102: Improving Health Equity.
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Columbia University - New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York
Calling all United States clinicians and clinicians-in-training: Do you have ideas on how to provide better medical care at lower cost? If so, enter the Costs of Care Creating Value Challenge 2015 for the opportunity to share how you or your team has created — or would create — value. The best ideas will earn submitters the chance to pitch their strategies live at the University of California, San Francisco to judges including the editor of JAMA Internal Medicine. Learn more about value-based care in our course QCV 100: An Introduction to Quality, Cost, and Value in Health Care.