Quality Improvement Project Tools and Resources

1. IHI Open School as a Framework for Resident Education in Safety and Quality
2. Development and Preliminary Evaluation of a Practice-Based Learning and Improvement Tool for Assessing Resident Competence and Guiding Curriculum Development
3. Certificates and Continuing Education
4. QI book
5. QI Template
6. QI Template Presentation
7. Selected Tools

Institute for Healthcare Improvement IHI Training Courses (patient Safety)

1. Safety and compliance training for healthcare organizations (healthstream.com)
2. Courses | Institute for Healthcare Improvement (ihi.org)

PDSA Quality Improvement Method

When using the PDSA cycle, it’s important to include internal and external customers; they can provide feedback about what works and what doesn’t. The customer defines quality, so it would make sense to also involve them in the process when appropriate or feasible, to increase acceptance of the end result. (If you’re unsure about, who your customers are, you may want to create a customer chain to assist in identification).

In applying PDSA, ask yourself three questions:

• What are we trying to accomplish?
• How will we know that a change is an improvement?
• What changes can we make that will result in an improvement

PDSA: Plan-Do-Study-Act

ROOT Cause Analysis

Root cause analysis (RCA) is a tool to help health care organizations retrospectively study events where patient harm or undesired outcomes occurred in order to identify and address the root causes. By understanding the root cause of an event, we can improve patient safety by preventing future harm. A good root cause analysis allows for the design and implementation of a solution that addresses the failure at its source.

The following resources will help you:

• Describing the purpose of an RCA.
• Explaining how to run an effective RCA.
• Describing the RCA Program.

Resources:

1. RCA Job Aid
2. RCA2: The National Patient Safety Foundation

QI Tools and Techniques

1. QI Project Charter Tool
2. How to Use a Driving Diagram
3. Download Key Driver Diagram Template

A3

A3 is a structured problem solving and continuous improvement approach, first employed at Toyota and typically used by lean manufacturing practitioners.[1] It provides a simple and strict approach systematically leading towards problem solving over structured approaches. A3 leads towards problem solving over the structure, placed on an ISO – ISO A3single sheet paper. This is where the process got its name. A3 is also known as SPS, which stands for “Systematic Problem Solving”. The process is based on the principles of Edward Deming’s PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act).

The following resources will help you:

• Utilize an A3 format for problem solving.
• Participate in A3 projects.
• Steps for the A3 Process