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.
Do you like organization and structure? Perhaps you prefer to work slowly and cohesively with others? Or
maybe you’re a spontaneous risk-taker? All these traits can tell you something about your working style and how you can work well with others. In a new video short, IHI faculty member Kathy Duncan walks viewers through the traits and behaviors associated with four different working styles and presents a valuable tool you can use with your team today.
Open School learners may know The Conversation Project, a national campaign dedicated to helping people express their wishes for end-of-life care, from the course PFC 103: Having the Conversation: Basic Skills for Conversations about End-of-Life Care. Making sure end-of-life wishes are respected also requires health care organizations to be prepared to meet those expressed desires. You can learn more about how you and your organization can apply five core principles to improve how you receive, record, and respect patients’ wishes related to end-of-life care in “Conversation Ready: A Framework for Improving End-of-Life Care,” a new IHI White Paper.
What is the most important attribute of a culture of safety? In a new post on Health Affairs Blog, four heavyweights from the patient safety movement make the case that transparency is a critical tool to advance safety that is too often overlooked. Robert Wachter, Gary S. Kaplan, Tejal Gandhi, and Lucian Leape describe how transparency can help hospitals uncover systems problems and provide comfort to those affected by medical errors, such as the one that killed Mary McClinton at Virginia Mason Medical Center. “We have much to gain — particularly in the patient safety arena — and very little to lose by being more open,” they write. Learn more about the culture of safety with the Open School Course PS 106: Introduction to the Culture of Safety.
This April, the intrepid improvers of the IHI Open School’s West Coast Region held their first conference, drawing about 160 students, professionals, and community members to Portland, Oregon. An Open School Chapter and Regional Leader organized the event, inviting speakers from across the country to share diverse experiences in health improvement, leadership, safety, system redesign, and Chapter development. In the first of two blog posts about the conference, the event organizers write about the insights they gained from the four exciting keynote speakers.
