Impact of Staff Learning and Coach Teaching Styles in Quality Improvement

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A healthcare quality improvement collaborative brings together multiple organizations in an effort to improve processes of care for clients in a specific organizational setting (e.g., substance misuse) or a particular disease (e.g., diabetes or asthma). Coaching, a key QIC component, involves a coach working with change or implementation leaders to teach quality improvement skills and thus helping participants learn skills to effect change in the organization. Understanding coach effectiveness and how the teacher-student relationship supports knowledge acquisition is a missing element in quality improvement research. In this study, we will adapt scales developed and validated in the field of educational research to assess individual learning and teaching styles and test their applicability in a quality improvement collaborative to identify learning styles of the implementation (i.e., change) leader and champion (i.e., executive sponsor) and teaching styles of the external change agent or coach. Study findings will lead to new potential prospective studies that match coaches and organizations or allow quality improvement or implementation science researchers to tailor the coaching intervention or the structure of a QI collaborative design based individual learning and teaching styles. Such studies would contribute to the fields of quality improvement and implementation research by exploring how change leader and executive sponsor learning styles and the teaching style of the coach improve expected patient and organizational outcomes.