Hospital QI Teams

Hello IHI Members

Here are the details for hospital QI teams.

What: Our chapter is beginning our most ambitious and exciting activity so far: Quality Improvement (QI) projects in hospitals and other health facilities.
How: 1) Sign-up here. 2) Complete QI 101, 102 and 103 at the IHI Open School. 3) You will be placed on a multi-disciplinary team of 6 students and assigned to a hospital project
When: Projects will start in the second half of January... ideally you should sign up before then. That said, depending on the volume of sign-ups and projects available, we may be able to place some teams starting in early February. Projects should be completed by the end of the semester.

What commitment is required?
1) prior to starting your project, you need to complete QI 101, 102 and 103 at IHI Open School. Each course takes less than an hour, and by completing these you will gain an understanding of the IHI's Model for Improvement - and the basic skills you will need when doing your projects.
2) It is also expected that throughout the semester, you will complete the five other courses currently available at the Open School. (also an hour or less, each)
3) Time: it's hard to estimate the time commitment required; you can expect between 1-4 hours per week, but this will be variable, and will also depend on how many site visits you make. There may be extra time required in the early stages of the project to get things up and running. But because you'll be in a team of 6, not everyone needs to do everything so if you're well-organized as a team, the time will be manageable
4) at the end, your team will need to create a poster and write a short paper on your project - this should be at the quality of "grey" literature and will be posted on the IHI website.

What will I actually do?
After determining the purpose of your project, you will engage with health providers and patients. You may need to shadow providers or patients and see what happens in the hospital. You will need to determine outcome measures, process measures and balancing measures, along with a system to measure them! You'll choose from a host of improvement ideas - you can search the literature for change ideas or you can use your own creativity. You'll need to figure out how to implement those change ideas and measure the system's performance over time. You'll use the IHI's Model for Improvement, which includes rapid-cycle improvements known as PDSAs.
This may sound like a lot - but you'll learn about all this in the Open School's courses. And you'll have support available throughout the semester should you need it.

Why sign-up?
1) you will gain excellent experience in healthcare facilities and in quality improvement methodology.
2) the IHI is the world's premiere patient safety institute. By completing the Open School courses and a QI project, you can meet the requirements for IHI certification, which is recognized around the world.
3) and... you will be making healthcare better according to the IHI's 6 dimensions of healthcare: safe, timely, efficient, effective, equitable, and patient-centered,
4) all these things will look great on your resume
5) the only cost is your time, energy and brain power (and maybe a few TTC tokens)
6) it will be FUN

This is a really exciting opportunity - if you are interested and willing to meet the above commitments, then please sign up at the link provided above.