University of Colorado: An Interprofessional Curriculum to Improve Quality and Safety
Member since: July 2014
Intervention: An Interprofessional Curriculum to Improve Quality and Safety
Partners:
- University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
- University of Colorado Hospital
Occupations represented: Students and professionals including nurses, pharmacists and physicians.
Overview: This educational intervention is intended to drive clinical change. The curriculum focuses on patient safety, the patient experience and continuous quality improvement (QI). Interprofessional student teams, together with the interprofessional faculty QI teams, experience healthcare on the front lines by interviewing and observing patients, and then identifying quality gaps in clinical care.
The teams make recommendations on how to improve clinical care, and use quality improvement tools to analyze their quality improvement recommendations. These solutions are offered to frontline clinical units to be used for future QI projects. The three core experiences with this curriculum are 1) understanding the patient experience by interviewing patients, 2) patient safety event analysis and reporting, and 3) analyzing quality improvement solutions with integration of students into the clinical leadership teams of the University's Institute for Healthcare, Quality, Safety and Efficiency.
Outcome measures are derived from student surveys, as well as clinical outcomes, including reported adverse events and safety intelligence reports, and quality improvement recommendations in the form of an executive summary.
Intervention study question:
- How does an interprofessional curriculum impact gaps in transitions of care, improve safety and the quality of care?