The Institute for Healthcare Improvement held a quality improvement capacity building workshop for Safe Care, Saving Lives team members in August. The workshop was an opportunity for team members to develop a deep understanding of different models for quality improvement.
Continuous quality improvement is at the heart of the Safe Care, Saving Lives program. Safe Care, Saving Lives hospital staff must identify areas of concern in their labor rooms and newborn care units; they must learn how to develop and test ideas that will overcome those areas of concern and improve the quality of care delivered; and they must learn how to collect data and analyze it to measure success and inform ongoing improvements that will positively impact health outcomes. It is no easy task and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement training was one added support for Safe Care, Saving Lives team members conducting this work.
In addition to exploring different models of quality improvement, the workshop also included sessions on how to collect data and quickly analyze it over short intervals to ensure that actions are producing the desired results. By doing the data analysis themselves, hospital staff are able to quickly modify and adjust their processes to improve outcomes. This builds a culture of improvement and increases the sense of ownership of the quality improvement process by healthcare staff. Other sessions focused on the importance of coaching, how to motivate physicians to become champions of quality improvement, and how to brainstorm ideas for improvements.
We thank our partners at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement for their ongoing support, especially Dr. Robert Lloyd, Vice President of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and Jane Taylor. You can read the full report from the workshop here.