Chapter Corner: Three Questions to Consider When Planning Quality Improvement Projects

Quality improvement projects benefit both students and organizations in a number of ways. Students have the opportunity to network and develop their improvement skills. Organizations, meanwhile, have the opportunity to meet enthusiastic students dedicated to improving healthcare, develop fresh ideas with student contributions, and guide and mentor the next generation of health professionals.

We just had our fall information session last week, and students have begun sending in their project applications. This is the first year the Atlanta chapter of the IHI Open School has embarked on establishing quality improvement opportunities for students.

Our goal is for students to gain real-world experience by participating in improvement projects, whether it is a snapshot or the various phases of a project. In addition to skills in quality improvement, some of these projects will also allow students to develop skills in patient safety, teamwork, leadership and patient-centered care.

Finding projects
Our group focused heavily on recruitment to gauge student project interest while simultaneously searching for project opportunities at various organizations. We wanted to ensure that there would be enough student interest to participate, but also wanted to ensure that project opportunities existed for student volunteers. I used contacts from informational interviews, previous internships, and professors to ask if their organizations might be interested in having students volunteer their time to quality improvement projects. If these contacts expressed interest, we then discussed the potential projects over a phone call.

Here are a few of the questions we kept in mind during the project planning process:

1. How can we develop and maintain good relationships with participating organizations?
If we maintain good relationships with these organizations, we might find additional project opportunities in the future within and outside of the organization. To maintain these relationships, we plan on touching base with project supervisors every so often throughout the project. And since this is our first year, we have limited the number of IHI Open School projects so we can focus on successful completion of these few projects.

2. What if we get a smaller applicant pool than we expect?
We wanted enough student interest so that each project would be able to find a number of students from various disciplines that would be a good fit for the organization. We emailed faculty/department advisors and our student government association to forward on our IHI Open School information to students. And since medical students are difficult to recruit due to their incredibly busy schedules, we contacted dual degree MD/MPH students that are in their MPH year, where the schedule is more flexible. Our final applicant pool is still yet to be seen.

3. How can we encourage students to share experience and knowledge with other students? While we want students to develop various skills, we also want them to share their project work and knowledge with other fellow students. We hope that this will create a culture of teaching others, developing leaders, and building relationships. We'll be setting up Open School meetings for students to share what they've learned.

It will be interesting to see how these projects progress over the course of the year. If anyone has any comments or suggestions, we would love to hear them!

- Becky Ng, Public Health student, Emory University

University of Minnesota Strives to Improve QI in Public Health

Quality improvement (QI) in public health is still not well defined, as there is often confusion about how the tools, techniques, and methodologies fit together.

Just a few of the challenges:

• Specific programs, such as emergency preparedness, are more likely to utilize QI methods than others.
  
• The IHI QI models are transferrable to the public health sector, but the governmental nature of public health departments are not typically found in other organizations, and can be an added challenge.
  
• The National Board of Public Health Examiners, the Public Health Accreditation Board, and the Council on Education for Public Health have voiced concerns about the need to provide more educational opportunities in performance improvement to working public health professionals.

Despite these obstacles, QI strategies will play a vital role in improving outcomes, especially as demands on the U.S. public health system continue to increase. In an effort to address these concerns, the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health is launching its certificate program for public health performance improvement.

The program, which is launching this fall, is designed to prepare public health professionals for successful leadership and implementation of quality improvement initiatives within their respective organizations. To become certified, a student must earn a minimum of 12 credits during five terms, which can be taken in person or online. Students will have the opportunity to apply their knowledge by leading an improvement team within their organization.

It's my hope that other universities across the country will also take steps to create quality and performance improvement certifications and concentrations to give students and working professionals the skills to implement successful improvement initiatives.
For more information on Minnesota's certificate, view this PDF: http://www.apha.org/NR/rdonlyres/47FDA17C-1B25-43D1-8E40-2CE17B0E8326/0/PerformImprovePubHInformsheet.pdf

Or visit the official website: http://www.sph.umn.edu/programs/certificate/piph/index.asp

- Becky Ng, Public Health student, Emory University

Chapter Corner: The Importance of Sharing Knowledge

By itself, content is limiting. While the information from a book is useful, there is no incentive or opportunity to offer an opinion and receive a response. It is simply a one-way flow of information. It's the people we meet and speak to that hold the real knowledge. As social creatures, others' work and life experiences will resonate more with us when we ask questions and have the opportunity to respond directly, whether it is in person or through email. I know all of these things because I learned them firsthand.

I asked a colleague of mine if they knew anyone working with process improvement in healthcare, and they put me in contact with two professors at Emory University's School of Medicine. From these connections, I was put in touch with a director at a nearby hospital's center for clinical performance improvement, as well as the Chief Quality Officers at two other hospitals. I've learned a tremendous amount from my conversations with them.

My conversations with these people were the true driving force that sparked my interest in quality improvement in healthcare, and I try to drop a line to say "hi" every few weeks or months. I'm even working with the director at the clinical performance improvement center to establish a quality improvement project for the Atlanta IHI Open School students. It's experiences like these where I find value in establishing new relationships, especially with those so willing to give back to students.

Here are some other ideas on sharing knowledge:

• Take advantage of others' knowledge by talking to fellow students, teachers, leaders - anyone you can make time for (and can make time for you).
  
• Search on LinkedIn for professionals in the area who are involved in healthcare improvement (after all, wasn't LinkedIn made for networking?).
  
• Email leaders from other schools in your region, or across the country. See what others are doing and network to share ideas.
  
• Read the "Chapter Accomplishments" on the IHI Open School website and find ideas that interest you and your group.
  
• Contact schools to learn more about their methodologies and challenges to accomplishing their goals. (It's been my group's experience that IHI Open School chapter leaders are extremely receptive to sharing ideas.)
  
• Talk to others to share knowledge and to generate opportunities. People generally love to talk about themselves, and would be more than happy to meet or speak about their experiences (probably more willing to do so than you might think).
  
• Talk to professors and coworkers, and ask them about what they do and how they got there. Ask if they know others in quality or process improvement, and see if you could set up a time to chat with them for 15 minutes. This could lead to new partnerships with your chapter, quality improvement projects, mentorships, additional IHI Open School exposure, among other advantages. Once you've developed those relationships, maintain them by following up throughout the year.

I reached out to one of my public health professors to ask about her work in quality improvement and told her about my involvement with the IHI Open School. After some meetings and phone calls, we eventually established two quality and process improvement team projects for IHI students to be involved in, and we hope to find the right students to make these initiatives a success! It's my hope that I'll be able to give back the same way that these professionals did for me.

I've found it invaluable to have these discussions with others, and I encourage other chapters to do the same. It sounds simple, but it can be tough work to find and maintain these relationships. We will always have something new to learn from each other.

- Becky Ng, Public Health student, Emory University