Dissemination and Implementation Methods: Quality and Safety Competencies in Academia and Practice

Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH

Investigators

Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract Despite modest improvements in healthcare quality over the past 15 years, errors in health care continue to cause more deaths than motor vehicle accidents and plane crashes combined, and patients are still routinely exposed to wide variations in the quality of health care they receive.1,2,3,4 Although quality and safety competencies exist for both undergraduate and graduate students in medical and nursing schools, the rate of implementation of these competencies nationally is slow. There is a critical need to bring educators, healthcare organization leaders, and researchers together to build capability to implement, disseminate and evaluate quality and safety competencies across educational and healthcare delivery organizations. The purpose of the 2017 Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) conference is to provide the knowledge of implementation and dissemination science to interprofessional healthcare educators, practice leaders, and researchers who are dedicated to improving healthcare quality and safety competencies. The conference will start an interprofessional initiative to align quality and safety competencies across academic and clinical institutions. We propose for the 2017 QSEN conference to bring together national experts from the Academy for Healthcare Improvement, the Training Institute for Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health (TIDIRH), the National Patient Safety Foundation, and healthcare organizations including Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania, and ProMedica. The specific aims are to: 1. Summarize research and other evidence related to adoption of quality and safety competencies in academic and practice settings; 2. Showcase exemplars of successful alignment of quality and safety competencies across academic and practice institutions; 3. Provide an overview of implementation, dissemination and evaluation methods specific to quality and safety in academic and practice settings (e.g. design, models, and measurement) and 4. Create a collaborative to develop an action plan that includes implementation, dissemination and evaluation strategies (e.g., toolkits) to assist in the integration of quality and safety competencies into both academia and clinical practice. Conference proceedings on the specific aims will be disseminated through white papers, peer-reviewed publications, webinars, web links (QSEN.org), and social media outlets.