Impact Lives

NRHL 5506 Quality Improvement & Safety in Healthcare Systems

Credits: 
3
Prerequisites: 
NRHL 5503 – Evidence-based Nursing Practice: Research and Process Improvement.

Format: Online
Duration: 8 weeks

In today's healthcare environment, delivering quality care is paramount and building a culture of safety is a strategic goal for all healthcare organizations. As direct caregivers, nurses are in a key role to positively impact patient care. NRHL 5506 Quality Improvement and Safety in Healthcare systems explores the evolution of patient safety and how nurses can be effective change agents as part of the collaborative healthcare team.

You will identify continuous quality improvements and improvement of patient safety processes and apply them to healthcare organizations. In addition, you will participate in the development of actual quality measures and explain how such measures could be used in a defined health or educational system.

What You’ll Learn in NRHL 5506

In this course, you will learn how to apply principles of quality and regulatory management. You’ll analyze problems caused by the varying levels of healthcare quality and strategies for improving them using models of evaluation and process improvement.

NRHL 5506 emphasizes the process of defining, measuring and evaluating outcomes within organizations and systems to empower students to become effective leaders and change agents.

Course Topics

Throughout this course, weekly topics may include but are not limited to:

  • The Impact of Quality and Safety in Healthcare
  • Creating a Culture of Safety
  • Safety Principles in Practice
  • Interdisciplinary Communication, Collaboration, and Leadership
  • The QSEN Initiative
  • Quality Improvement
  • Healthcare Organization Report Cards
  • High Reliability Organizations

Planning Your Time

Course Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of NRHL 5506, you will be able to:

  • Analyze and apply patient safety goals and initiatives, their impact on health care systems, and actual or potential failures of basic safety principles to promote an organizational culture of quality and safety.
  • Identify and apply effective use of technology and standardized practices that include analysis of errors and integration of accepted evidence-based practice, that supports safety and quality and improve patient outcomes.
  • Develop an understanding of effective communication, collaboration and accountability within nursing and interprofessional teams and enhance the role of communication technology to achieve quality and safe patient care.
  • Compare and apply principles of reliable quality improvement methods and tools for evaluation and process improvement in health care.
  • Develop an understanding of healthcare quality and safety standards and the impact on nursing education or health care systems.
  • Develop and apply an understanding of the impact of quality and safety in regards to High Reliability Organizations (HROs) in healthcare to promote culturally sensitive, safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable and cost-effective patient centered care.
  • Examine the role and use of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) to improve patient care and increase quality and safety.

*Disclaimer: Course content and outcomes may vary and are subject to change without notice.

Request More Information Today

To learn more about the online Master of Science in Nursing curriculum from Benedictine University, including Quality Improvement and Safety in Healthcare Organizations, call (866) 295-3104 to speak with a program manager or request more information.