Educating Staff about QI

Fri, 01/22/2016 - 10:52 -- jgoodern

Our LHD just implemented our QI plan in October of 2015 and I just started as our first QI coordinator.  We have trained all our health department staff on the fundamentals of QI and have a process in place for all new hires to receive the same training.  We also have a plan for a more specific training for the Quality Council and our project facilitators.  I'm wondering what others have written into their plans regarding continuing to educate all staff on QI?  Frequency of planned staff trainings (annually, every other year, etc.)?  Format? How extensive? Topics?

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Submitted by tkane on

Greetings & congratulations on your new role as QI coordinator at your health department. I hope you find it to be a fulfilling role. You've asked some excellent questions and I anticipate that you'll receive many responses from the PHQIX user community. Here is some feedback to get you started!

I strongly encourage you to review Effectiveness of Public Health Quality Improvement Training Approaches by Mary Davis and others. The article was originally published in the Jan-Feb 2012 issue of the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice. If you don't have access to the JPHMP, a short description & summary of key findings can be found here: http://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2012/01/effectiveness-of-public-...

For basic online training for most staff, don't reinvent the wheel. Here are 2 excellent FREE resources: 

  • CQI for Public Health: The Fundamentals from The Ohio State University College of Public Health, Center for Public Health Practice. Information about the training is available at the following link: http://cph.osu.edu/practice/cqi-public-health-fundamentals. 
  • Introduction to Quality Improvement in Public Health from the Kansas Department of Health & Envirnoment and the Public Health Foundation. The course is available via TRAIN by searching for Course ID #1059243

Also, you may find these two threads from the PHQIX Community Forum to be helpful:

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Submitted by gkroberts on

Congrats and welcome to the world of public health QI! I am happy to hear that you are reaching out to the PHQIX community since so many others have similar questions. Ty has provided some great resources above.

To add to his, my agency has an annual employee education/appreciation day for all staff and part of the day is focused on quality improvement. We use this day to refresh QI fundamentals and have QI Champions share their project successes and lessons learned over the past year. It really serves as a QI rally, and the peer-to-peer sharing is the most effective way to get everyone excited about QI. This would take the place of having to do an annual refresher training.

I think you are certainly on the right track by having a QI fundamentals training for your entire staff and the same for new employees, along with a more extensive training for the QI Council and project team. My lessons learned here are that the QI Council certainly should take a more in-depth training, but we provided on-the-spot training for the project teams since these folks were not always on the QI Council and didn't have as much time to dedicate to doing extensive trainings. Thus, the QI Council member leading the project did a brief intro of QI fundamentals at the beginning of the first project meeting.

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Gurleen Roberts, MPH
Director of Quality Management
Cobb & Douglas Public Health
Marietta, GA
gurleen.roberts@dph.ga.gov

Grace Gorenflo's picture
Submitted by Grace Gorenflo on

I'll start by echoing the welcomes!  In my experience just-in-time training is the most effective way to engage staff in QI.  In other words, provide training that walks participants through the application of QI tools and methods to a real-life scenario.  This approach tends to keep people in the room engaged (and you would need to devote a full day to this, or do it over 2 days).  It also helps "sell" staff on QI as they can see the benefits of a QI project in action.  Finally, staff will be easier to engage/lead through another QI project once they have actually been through the process.

I wish you well in your new position!

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Submitted by tkane on

Excellent point Grace.

A few years ago NACCHO published an issue brief featuring QI activities (training & culture development) at Sedgwick County Health Department in Wichita, Kansas. The section called "QI TEAMS & TRAINING" discusses the model of training that Grace referred to above (i.e., a combination of didactic/instructional and workshop style of training). Many agencies have hired consultants or used internal resources to carry out similar training. 

Take a look at the article below & let me know via this Community Forum thread if you have any questions about the experience in Sedgwick County: 

http://archived.naccho.org/topics/infrastructure/accreditation/upload/se...

 

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