Learning How to Improve Health Care Through Applied Simulation
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Program Overview
Lead healthcare improvement with real-world simulation
Understanding improvement science is the starting point. Being able to lead an improvement initiative, step by step, under real conditions, with real data, is the goal. This course, which builds on Fundamentals of Health Care Quality Improvement, takes participants through the complete improvement journey in a structured, instructor-led environment designed to build practical capability and the confidence to act.
The core of the course is a synchronous group simulation exercise built around a real-world case study. Working with peers and guided by the instructor, participants move through each stage of the Model for Improvement: defining an aim, assembling a team, mapping the current system, designing indicators, testing changes, plotting time-series data, and making data-driven decisions to iteratively improve results. Methods and tools are introduced just-in-time as they arise within the simulation, ensuring that learning is always grounded in application rather than abstraction.
Running in parallel with the simulation, participants undertake the guided design of a personal improvement project. At each stage of the simulation, they apply the same methods and decisions to a priority relevant to themselves or their own setting. By the end of the course, each participant will have produced a complete improvement project design ready for implementation. Advanced topics, including collaborative improvement, co-production, and the relationship between quality assurance and quality improvement, extend the curriculum to prepare participants for the broader landscape of improvement work.
Learning Objectives
After completing this course, participants will be able to:
- Define a clear, time-bound improvement aim appropriate to their healthcare setting
- Assemble and lead an effective multidisciplinary improvement team
- Map and analyze a healthcare delivery process using flowcharting and systems thinking
- Design a focused set of indicators, including process, output, and outcome measures, to track the progress of improvement
- Collect, display, and interpret data using time-series charts to monitor the effects of tested changes
- Plan and conduct iterative PDSA cycles, making evidence-based decisions at each stage of testing
Complete a structured design for a personal improvement project ready for implementation or scaling within their organization
Program Details
This course is intended for healthcare leaders and professionals who are ready to lead an improvement initiative and have completed Fundamentals of Health Care Quality Improvement or possess equivalent foundational knowledge.
- 1: Applied Simulation Overview
- 2: (Live) Aim
- 3: (Live) Team
- 4: (Live) Current System
- 5: (Live) Indicators I
- 6: (Live) Indicators II (run on same day as Indicators I)
- 7: (Live) TOC Changes
- 8: (Live) Testing & Time Series
- 9: Advanced Concepts I
- 10: Advanced Concepts II
- 11: (Live) Discussion Session
