Content Overview

This course focuses on practical tools and methods to improve healthcare services in low- and middle-inco-me countries. It introduces participants to major steps and trends in healthcare quality and patient safety movements with a focus on challenges to improving quality in resource-limited settings. Course participants learn how to adapt quality impro-vement tools, methods, and techniques to national and local settings with a special emphasis on mana-ging and motivating people and designing sustainable health improvement programmes. A two-day skills development workshop strengthens individual and team skills in evaluating the quality of health care services.

Course Topics

• Prioritizing quality improvement: rationale, methods and examples
• Overview of quality and safety terminology and concepts
• Harmonizing quality improvement with local and international health system strengthening initiatives
• Developing and implementing standards, guidelines and indicators in a healthcare service
• Designing and implementing quality assessments using audit, accreditation and supervision
• Personal skills development for managing teams in improving quality
• Designing and managing quality improvement teams including quality circles, clinical guideline working groups, clinical audit, and quality improvement committees
• Quality improvement tools such as checklists, affinity analysis, flow chart, mind mapping, fish-bone diagram, force-field analysis, prioritisation matrix, Gantt chart, control chart, and radar chart
• Case studies of quality improvement in low and middle-income countries

Learning Objectives

By the end of the module the participants should be able to:

• Defend the importance of improving quality in health services
• Describe common mechanisms to improve quality of health services in resource limited settings
• Critically analyze the use of quality improvement principles and mechanisms in resource limited settings
• Describe current human and other resource challenges to improve health service quality Demonstrate individual and team skills in using quality improvement tools and mechanisms