Content Overview

Are you working (or wanting) to improve the quality of health care services? At your institution, or organisation, or health facility? In a low- or middle-income (or even high-income) country? Do you ever feel that there is something not quite right about the way Quality Management techniques are implemented, but cannot fully explain why? If so, this 2-week course may be for you.

We will take you on a global journey through the history of quality improvement, describing in detail the established and recognised theories and practices. These include management frameworks, quality improvement principles and health care quality and safety evaluation mechanisms and tools, including a detailed look at indicators and monitoring.

But we will also take you further, clearly explaining the original core principles of Quality Management, revealing how many organisations have drifted away from them. Paradoxically, they may even end up harming quality - with the very initiatives meant for improvement!

We use practical exercises and case studies, including a 2-day skills development workshop that strengthens individual and team skills in evaluating the quality of health care services, and develops critical thinking on how assessment standards should be used. Participants work individually and together to identify and design context-specific, sustainable, resilient quality improvement initiatives particularly in low- and middle-income countries. 

Course Topics

• Major steps and historical trends in the healthcare quality and patient safety movements
• Quality management and patient safety principles, mechanisms and tools and their contextual relevance especially (but not only) in low- and middle-income countries
• Quality management case-study set in a middle-income country and assessment tool (eg for accreditation of a health facility) to critically evaluate quality particularly in a low- and middle-income context
• Leadership to manage healthcare quality including ethical and cultural aspects
• Leading teams to use selected quality management tools
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): their usefulness and dangers
• Monitoring and evaluation, with a focus on the skills needed for development of indicators (linked to Log-Frames) and measurement
• Implementing healthcare quality management mechanisms and tools
• Internet resources, publications and grey literature for healthcare quality management
• If feasible to visit a German hospital, a critical review of quality management mechanisms in German healthcare facilities

Learning Objectives

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

• Appraise recent developments and challenges in assuring healthcare quality in low- and middle-income countries.
• Critically analyse international healthcare quality management and patient safety mechanisms and their global transferability.
• Differentiate roles of stakeholders in managing healthcare quality improvement initiatives and activities both locally and globally.
• Apply personal and team skills to lead the use of quality management tools and mechanisms in their setting.
• Design a strategy for strengthening healthcare quality in their country or region using key quality improvement principles and mechanisms.