Opportunities in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety
The Department of Medicine has invested significantly in quality and innovation (QI) and patient safety (PS) education, contributing to the establishment of several advanced QI training programs:
The Co-Learning Curriculum in Quality Improvement brings together residents and faculty as co-learners, addressing the dual need to teach QI to residents, while simultaneously building faculty capacity to supervise and teach QI. Initially launched in the Department of Medicine in 2011, the curriculum spans one academic year and includes two interactive workshops, typically in September and January, a resident team-based QI project under the faculty’s supervision, and a final session in June that involves a keynote speaker and group project presentations.
Over 35 training programs from the Departments of Medicine, Paediatrics, Surgery and Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology at the University of Toronto participate in Co-Learning. The Co-Learning Model has also expanded beyond Toronto to other universities.
IHPME offers a MSc concentration in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety in a unique partnership with the University of Toronto’s Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety. It is one of the first graduate programs in English Canada to offer a specific focus on Quality Improvement and Patient Safety.
The Quality Improvement and Patient Safety concentration provides students with the opportunity to focus their research and learning on both the theory and application of improvement science in real time. The program offers a comprehensive, innovative curriculum that incorporates the latest research and thinking in healthcare Quality Improvement, Patient Safety and Leadership.
The CQuIPS Certificate in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety consists of over 60 hrs of in-person class time over 10 months. The course is designed for healthcare professionals, including clinicians, researchers and administrators, and covers core concepts in QI/PS using a mixture of didactic lectures, interactive sessions, workplace-based exercises and presentations by participants.
The Excellence in Quality Improvement Certificate Program (EQUIP) is designed for academic physicians aiming to integrate QI into their clinical work and scholarly activities in a meaningful and rigorous manner. The program focuses on QI methodologies, leading and publishing QI work and teaching QI, with the ultimate aim of developing capacity in QI across academic departments and universities. The EQUIP program consists of six days of in-class training over the course of ten months, three initial days in July and three final days the following May.
The Veterans Affairs Quality Scholars (VAQS) program is a two year fellowship, run through Veterans Affairs in the US, designed to nurture fellows and junior faculty and allow them to develop a career in research, in QI and health services, or in QI within the framework of a position in medical administration, education, or clinical practice. The scholars participate in weekly half-day meetings on Friday afternoons and the VAQS Summer Institute in Houston, Texas.
