Healthcare Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Training Course

Course overview

In 1999 the Institute of Medicine's report "To Err Is Human" put a number on a problem hospitals had long treated as anecdotal: tens of thousands of American patients were dying every year from preventable error, not from disease. The report did not blame individual clinicians so much as the systems around them, and that single reframe, from "bad apples" to "bad systems," is still the intellectual foundation of modern healthcare quality improvement. Two decades on, the World Health Organization's Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021-2030 makes the same argument at a global scale: safety is an emergent property of how care is designed, measured, and corrected, not a matter of staff trying harder.

This course works through the full discipline that grew out of that reframe: the improvement frameworks (PDSA, Lean, Six Sigma), the investigative tools (root cause analysis, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis), the governance structures that hold quality accountable at board level, and the measurement systems and safety culture that make improvement durable instead of a one-off project. Participants leave with a working command of Donabedian's structure-process-outcome model, practice building and reading run charts and control charts, and complete a group capstone that applies these tools to a documented improvement scenario, producing a short improvement roadmap sized to their own department or facility.

Why quality improvement is a measurement discipline, not a mindset

Hospitals that describe safety as a "top priority" and hospitals that actually reduce harm turn out to differ less in intention than in infrastructure: incident reporting systems that staff trust enough to use, statistical process control that distinguishes real signal from ordinary variation, and root cause analysis that produces changed processes instead of a filed report nobody reads again. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement's Triple Aim, better outcomes, better experience of care, and lower per-capita cost, only holds together when a facility can measure the first two well enough to know whether an intervention actually moved them.

This is also where quality improvement work most often stalls: a Lean event or a Six Sigma DMAIC project produces a well-documented fix, but the gain fades within a year because nobody built a measurement loop or an accountable owner into the change. The units on governance, performance measurement, and change management in this course exist specifically to close that gap between a good project and a lasting improvement.

What you will be able to do afterwards

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Run a Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle using the IHI Model for Improvement
• Facilitate an RCA using five-whys and an Ishikawa fishbone diagram
• Calculate an FMEA risk priority number from severity and detection
• Interpret structure-process-outcome indicators via Donabedian
• Build a statistical process control chart for variation
• Apply Lean and Six Sigma DMAIC to clinical workflows
• Design incident reporting on Just Culture principles
• Draft a change plan using a stakeholder engagement map

Course outline

Unit 1: Foundations of quality and patient safety

• WHO Global Patient Safety Action Plan and harm data
• From process failure to adverse event to outcome
• Systems failure cases causing patient harm
• Donabedian's quality model: structure, process, outcome

Unit 2: Improvement frameworks: Lean, Six Sigma, and PDSA

• PDSA and Institute for Healthcare Improvement
• Lean and the Toyota Production System: eight wastes
• Six Sigma DMAIC and the cost of statistical rigor
• Framework choice: rapid-cycle testing or a formal project

Unit 3: Patient safety systems and protocols

• WHO Surgical Safety Checklist and error reduction evidence
• Medication safety: reconciliation and sound-alike drugs
• Fall prevention and sepsis-recognition bundles
• High reliability principles: preoccupation with failure

Unit 4: Risk management, root cause analysis, and FMEA

• James Reason's Swiss cheese model of accident causation
• Root cause analysis: five-whys and Ishikawa (fishbone)
• Failure Mode and Effects Analysis: severity and occurrence
• Proactive FMEA versus reactive RCA investigation

Unit 5: Clinical governance and accountability

• Governance: committees, credentialing, and accountability
• External standards: JCI (Joint Commission International)
• Regulatory obligations versus internal quality governance
• Governance-in-practice cases: decisions and reviews

Unit 6: Performance measurement and indicators

• Selecting structure, process, and outcome indicators
• Control charts: common-cause and special-cause variation
• Benchmarking against peers and unadjusted-rate pitfalls
• Using indicator dashboards for continuous improvement; participants wanting deeper technical grounding in outcome measurement can continue with Measuring Healthcare Outcomes and Performance

Unit 7: Patient-centered care and engagement

• Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care principles
• SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation)
• Teach-back and structured communication scenarios
• Patient feedback channels and coded complaint data

Unit 8: Building a culture of safety

• Just Culture: slip, at-risk choice, and reckless conduct
• Amy Edmondson's psychological safety and reporting rates
• Incident reporting systems and closing the loop
• Safety-culture cases and leadership behavior

Unit 9: Evidence-based practice and reducing variation

• Practice guidelines, evidence hierarchies, and local fit
• John Wennberg's research on unwarranted clinical variation
• Standardized order sets and evidence-based care pathways
• Protocol adherence as a process indicator feeding PDSA

Unit 10: Technology and patient safety

• Electronic health records and decision support alerts
• HL7 and FHIR interoperability standards
• Barcode medication administration and closed-loop checks
• Alert fatigue from over-aggressive decision support

Unit 11: Leading change for quality improvement

• Kotter's eight-step model and ADKAR compared
• Stakeholder mapping and early frontline engagement
• Overcoming resistance: a change leadership exercise
• Sustaining: ownership, monitoring, and standard work

Unit 12: Capstone quality and safety project

• Defining an aim statement and selecting indicators
• Applying RCA or FMEA to find failure modes
• Designing a PDSA test cycle and measurement plan
• Presenting findings as a governance-ready recommendation

How the course is delivered

The format favors worked examples and guided walkthroughs over lecture: participants build an actual fishbone diagram, score a real FMEA table, and read a run chart before the course asks them to apply the same tools to their own capstone scenario. Structured exercises replace open discussion where precision matters, for instance in scoring FMEA severity or drafting an aim statement. The course is educational and does not constitute clinical or medical advice; it does not replace clinical judgment, an institution's licensure requirements, or its own clinical governance and regulatory obligations, which remain the responsibility of the participant's employing organization.

Who should attend

People who own or influence a quality or safety outcome, not merely report on one, get the most from this course.

• Quality improvement managers and coordinators
• Patient safety officers and risk managers
• Clinical governance leads and medical staff office leadership
• Hospital and clinic department heads
• Nursing and medical leadership responsible for unit-level or service-line outcomes

About EuroQuest International Training

Operating from a Bratislava headquarters since 2015, EuroQuest International Training has built a course catalog past 1000 titles and trained more than 15,000 participants across teaching hubs in Geneva, Barcelona, Istanbul, London, Vienna, Dubai, and Paris. This flagship quality and safety course is led by faculty with direct root-cause-analysis and FMEA casework behind them, so the fishbone diagrams and run charts participants build reflect problems department leaders actually recognize.

Frequently asked questions

What credential or document does the course provide?

A EuroQuest completion certificate is issued to everyone who finishes the course, naming the topics covered. It is not an external, third-party certification, and it does not confer a credentialed qualification in any quality methodology on its own.

Does the course include a live lab?

No. There is no live lab or physical testing environment. Root cause analysis, FMEA, and PDSA work are covered through guided walkthroughs of documented cases and a group-based capstone exercise where participants apply the tools to a written scenario and present their reasoning, rather than through any simulated or physical lab setting.

Is a Lean or Six Sigma certification included with this course?

No. The course teaches Lean and Six Sigma concepts as they apply to healthcare quality work, including DMAIC structure and waste reduction, but it does not grant an external Lean or Six Sigma belt certification. It is educational, does not certify participants in any external quality methodology, and does not substitute for an institution's own clinical governance or regulatory obligations. Participants who complete the course receive the EuroQuest completion certificate described above.

Related courses

These courses extend into the external recognition, risk, experience, and operations dimensions of the same quality agenda.

• Regulatory Compliance in Healthcare Administration
• Healthcare Risk Assessment and Crisis Response
• Patient Experience and Customer Service Excellence
• Hospital Operations and Service Excellence

Register for this course

Put a documented improvement method behind your quality and safety program: ring +421 911 803 183 or message info@euroqst.com with your department's priority issue, and the next available cohort and host city will be confirmed.