WAYS TO MAKE QI FUN

jloewe's picture
Wed, 01/15/2014 - 17:14 -- jloewe

While its easy to see that Public Health needs to move toward Quality Improvement, Accreditation and Performance Management; let's face it--many public health employees dread this type of talk. They have been serving clients and patients for years and they enjoy the relational and service aspects of their jobs. These trends in public health are viewed as managerial and "for administrators"; yet we all know they are most successful if everyone is involved. So Im looking for creative ways to engage staff----including those near retirement.

Here is one example I thought of to get the ball rolling......having an agency "Data Diva" award to encourage the use of data in decision making/launching QI projects.

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bethvw's picture
Submitted by bethvw on

The "data diva" award sounds like a neat idea. To make QI training fun, I use an idea I got from Jack Moran at the Public Health Foundation. To introduce flow-charting, I put people in small groups and have them flow-chart coming to work in the morning. Start: wake up, End: walk in front door of work. Each group then presents their flow-chart to the larger group. Prepare yourself for laughter and fun! As the facilitator you can also add in some fun comments, as people present or during your summary of each presentation to keep the laughter going. We also have a accreditation/QI bulletin board in a prominent location for staff. At the end of a project each team makes a fun, creative posting about their project, signs their names to it and posts it on the board. Pictures are great too. This helps our agency to show accomplishments and take pride in group work.
Hope this helps!

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Public Health Services Manager
Clark County Health Department, KY
bethv.willett@ky.gov
www.clarkhealthdept.org
@CCHealthDept

Submitted by Carlylb on

We started sending out a monthly Quality newsletter. There is a "In the Spotlight" section that highlights a QI project team or a staff person using a QI tool. Staff seem to enjoy seeing photos of their coworkers. We include a fun activity section where we have things like a word scramble for quality terminology, a fill in the blank on the 10 essential public health services, and a crossword puzzle on the 12 PHAB Domains.

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Rhonda Bartow

Grace Gorenflo's picture
Submitted by Grace Gorenflo on

When I was at NACCHO, we had a naming contest to help kick-off our organization-wide QI effort. The winner was Quality Teams Improving Processes and Systems, or QTIPS. (By staff vote, this won over SQUID, my personal favorite, in addition to some other extremely creative acronyms.) After I left the organization, I realized I could have taken this further by presenting a "golden QTIP" (i.e., a QTip drenched in gold paint) to each staff member who participated in a "QTIPS" and otherwise have fun with recognition of the improvements and learnings that were achieved. (A QTIPS was highlighted during each monthly staff meeting and we also had a column in each monthly staff newsletters.) And as for training - I love Jack's getting to work flow chart -- and that prompted me to come up with additional, relevant exercises to use in trainings: e.g., you could use "selecting a vacation" or "identifying the first/next QI effort for the agency" as fodder for teaching tools on decision-making. And to show my true geekiness, I used a fishbone diagram at home to figure out how to get my 3 girls out the door on time in the mornings. Not surprisingly, I had started to get them up earlier and earlier before I decided to use this tool; we found that the solution was to have them brush out their long hair (all 3 had it) the night before. We thus exceeded the aim statement of "Within 2 weeks, we will have 7 days in which we make it to the bus stop on time, without running, and without Mom yelling at us." Happy mom, happy kids. So if you actually use a QI tool to help you in a context outside of a QI effort (and there are many applications!), you can always weave that into trainings as well. In fact, maybe you can also challenge staff to do just that.....

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jerober's picture
Submitted by jerober on

Starting with easy, fun QI projects or exercises, as mentioned above, is key, I think. A couple of teams in our agency have improved how they celebrate birthdays as a way to introduce and learn QI concepts and tools while having a good time. And of course, it helps to have food and celebrations at the end, whether your project was about birthdays or not!

A tool I like to use for fun is reverse brainstorming. Instead of thinking of ways to improve something, we think of ways to make the situation worse, and then go from there. Everyone's usually got something to say when we take this approach and it usually gets everyone laughing and having fun as well.

Our agency also plans to add an incentive QI team award (2 hours paid time off for each team member) to our current incentive program to reward teams and their QI work. Someone mentioned on the Feb 11 twitter chat that they'd given out Indiana Jones awards for great explorers in QI and I really liked this idea.

We'd also like to include a 'QI corner' with photos on our new intranet to highlight the work QI teams are doing.

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Jenny Robertson, MSPH
Epidemiologist
Salt Lake County Health Department
slcohealth.org

Submitted by margyrob on

I have not heard of the concept of reverse brainstorming - could you give an example of how that works. Thanks.

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Margy Robinson MPH
HIV Care Services Mgr.
Multnomah County Health Dept.
Portland, OR

cgizzi's picture
Submitted by cgizzi on

For a fun way to celebrate QI successes, I like the "Strut Your Stuff" awards given in the past by the Washington State Department of Health. Winners received a festive certificate (with a peacock strutting its stuff) signed by the Secretary of Health and were invited to lunch with the Secretary. I can send a copy of what the award looks like, if you're interested.

I also like the Domestic Lean Goddess video series on You Tube. There's one for doing laundry (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkXUqxO0FEA) and getting the kids to school on time (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsp-19o_5vU). They are light and fun, but informative.

Cindan Gizzi, MPH
Community Assessment Manager
Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department
cgizzi@tpchd.org

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Grace Gorenflo's picture
Submitted by Grace Gorenflo on

Cindan, please share "Strut Your Stuff" awards information! And thanks for sharing the videos!

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Submitted by ElizabethMizelle on

These comments have been very helpful! We are just starting a QI Council and there has been rolling of eyes and gnashing of teeth. I am going to use the reverse brainstorming to get folks laughing at our next meeting. Thank you!

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Submitted by ebakota on

We recently had a Kaizen QI event at our health department and one of the first activities we did was successful in generating buy-in.

The kaizen team was divided into 2 groups of 4-5 people and each group was given a ball. Each group was tasked with timing how long it took to have the ball be passed around the group with each person touching the ball once. The only rule was each person had to, for at least an instant, be the sole person touching the ball. We did it for 3 rounds and we were able to reduce the time it took from several seconds to less than 1 second.

All in all it took 10 minutes to accomplish and I found it to be very persuasive on how impactful QI can be.

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Submitted by Carlylb on

We made a Plinko board with numbers 0-9 and a prize slot. Then we trained staff on using checksheets to collect data. We asked them "Why are phone calls placed on hold for an extended period of time?" The staff came up with the reasons and developed the checksheet to monitor phone calls for a week. The staff took turns playing Plinko to fill in random numbers on the checksheet, and they won a prize if they landed on the prize slot. The staff had so much fun.

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Rhonda Bartow

Submitted by scoiegreen on

We have a monthly "Quality Counts!" newsletter which channels information to providers and members of the community. It allows us to brag a little and celebrate success!

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Shontae Fluelen-Hays's picture
Submitted by Shontae Fluelen-Hays on

We have developed an all-staff 4 module training in QI. The first module included introduction to basic QI tools.
Examples of how we made it fun:
-We developed group exercises(games) and divided the entire class into teams. The games included development and presentation of a flow diagram made of colored paper in shapes corresponding to the different components within a flow. Each team picked a process, (work related or otherwise) worked together to outline the process, and presented their outcomes by properly taping the shapes on a whiteboard and using dry erase markers to identify direction to the next step. Based on response by round of applause/vote of who had the best "flow" of a process, we picked a winner! Not only did it offer us an additional opportunity to discuss proper structure of a flow diagram, but also allowed us to assess how well our information regarding outlining process was received.
- We provided each group a giant poster board with a fishbone diagram (ishikawa) that look like a colorful fish! They would discuss possible causes to an issue. Based on their findings for what could be attributed to an issue occuring, they would fill out labels and attach them to the fish to create the "ribs" many great discussions and potential QI project ideas were generated!
- Finally, the groups performed the 5 Why's on an problem. For each "answer" they were presented, the entire class was give permision to "act like a 5 year old" ask "WHY!" as loud as possible! We were able to discuss whether or not their findings were sufficient or maybe use of another root-cause analysis tool would be more beneficial.

Our strategy was very simple and offered a bit of a change from the online or typical classroom presentation of QI. It allowed us to have everyone engaged and supported the fact that in implementation of a QI plan, everyone counts! It is a team effort. By making that first introduction quite memorable, the activities created discussion well after class about the quality tools and took away a little of the mystery surrounding their use! We found that once they understood how they were supposed to be used, they were more inclined to use them.

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Submitted by faithl on

Bethvw- I love the idea! this would be a great way to teach QI process as well.

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Submitted by dyerz on

These are all great ideas! We launched our QI Council with volunteers so luckily that team is working together well but we are still struggling with getting the rest of the agency excited about this work. I think we are going to try to the reverse brainstorming, I think it will help put our challenges in perspective and make them feel less overwhelming and get everyone laughing.

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Submitted by Dan Eder on

We did an activity utilizing the PDCA process and paper airplanes. You created an airplane and had your baseline, then conducted a root cause analysis (how to make the plan fly better), tested the flight, and then decide to abandon/adopt/adapt. We had teams and various stations and gave away small wooden planes to those who had the most improvement. We actually did this at what we call our All Hands Meeting, which contains all of the staff at the health department. It made learning about QI fun and we tailored the activity to a training on the PDCA process. Sometimes PDCA can be a challenging or scary term to those who do not regularly use it, so this was a way that people could relate the process to a fun activity. We have also created a resource library internally for our staff, which contain links to YouTube videos and other documents to help with the various learning styles.

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Dan Eder

Submitted by Kristen Lacijan on

Love reading these ideas!! I hadn't come across reverse brainstorming and I'm intrigued. Also love the Indiana Jones awards. Thanks, everyone!

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sarabosse's picture
Submitted by sarabosse on

I have the opposite response from most of our staff- they are so busy that "fluff" isn't well tollerated. They want to get down to business and move on the the next thing.

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Sara Bosse
Fresno County Department of Public Health
Manager, Office of Policy Planning and Communication
Accreditation Coordinator

eich0117's picture
Submitted by eich0117 on

Our QI Council is called the PIT (Performance Improvement Team). We use a car racing analogy and encourage staff to come to us when they have a process that needs a quick "tun up" or a tool that they can quickly apply to their work. We have PIT KITS that includes examples of QI tools and projects, a PIT QI traveling trophy, and highlight QI stories and successes in the "PIT Stop" section of our department's monthly newsletter.

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Alex Elizabeth

prusso's picture
Submitted by prusso on

REach out to Houston Health Department - Robert Hines and Ololade COker - they have a whole variety of tools and games for making accreditation and QI FUN!     We'll see if we can share some of those on PHQIX.org...once they are ready to share them!

 

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Submitted by Carlylb on

Our QI Steering Committee thought it would be great to do something for the holidays to promote QI, that I thought I'd share.  We are planning the "12 Days of Quality".....

On the 1st Day of Quality, my true love gave to me one AIMS statement to improve his/her work.  And in return he/she received 1 golden ticket to enter the Grand Prize drawing and a chance at the daily prize.

On the 2nd Day- two SMART objectives- 2 tickets for the grand pize & 1 daily ticket, Day 3- One Flow Diagram- # tickets based on the day, 1 daily ticket........Day 4- Pie chart, Day 5- a "5 S" desk with a little decoration, Day 6- Bar Chart, Day7- Run Chart, Day 8- Affinity diagram, Day 9- one nomination (written paragraph) of a coworker for QI Champion, Day 10- a list of 10 essential services you perform, Day 11- SWOT analysis of your work area, Day 12- Storyboard or QI story.

We will be hiding blue & white candycanes during the 12 days to promote our branding strategy which will have tickets attached to enter a "Candy Cane" drawing.  Candy canes can also be obtained by citing our vision, mission, and values.  Those who participate in all 12 days will be invited to a pizza party.  When its all done, we will have a memorable scrapbook of our QI activities.

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Rhonda Bartow

Submitted by karnold on

I am planning on upcoming QI trainings with staff and heard a few people at a recent conference reference a DOT exercise.  Is anyone familiar with that and if so, would you be willing to share how it works?

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Grace Gorenflo's picture
Submitted by Grace Gorenflo on

I'm not sure if DOT is an acronym, but if not, I know of a quick multi-voting technique that uses dots.  Does that resonate? 

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Submitted by azsnyder on

Grace Gorenflo, I have to know what the acronyms were! 

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Submitted by tkane on

I have not heard "DOT" used as an acronym (related to QI) either. Building on what Grace said; voting or multi-voting with dots is a common exercise for voting and/or priority-setting, especially by larger groups. 

The American Society for Quality is an excellent resource for information about QI tools. The webpage provided below includes a description of the multi-voting technique. Note: you'll see that "dot voting" is listed as a "variation". Sticky dots are commonly used in the part of the process described in bullets #4 & #7 under the "Multivoting Procedure" header. 

Information about on multivoting from ASQ: http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/decision-making-tools/overview/multiv...

Additionally, this example from NACCHO (page 3) explains how dot voting (as well as other priority-setting tools) can be used during a community health planning process: http://archived.naccho.org/topics/infrastructure/CHAIP/upload/Final-Issu...

Finally, this resource includes a tremendous amount of information about dot voting: http://www.conferencesthatwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Chapter-49...

Good luck!

Ty

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