Professor Niro Siriwardena recently contributed to ‘Safer, Better and Stronger: Quality Improvement for EMS Leaders’ a one-day preconference course at the North American Emergency Medical Services Physicians (NAEMSP) Annual Conference in San Diego, on January 10, 2018.
Around 60 EMS physicians attended the day to learn about quality improvement methods from experts based in the US and UK led by Dr Michael Redlener, EMS and Emergency Department physician based in New York city and chair of the NAEMSP Quality and Safety Committee together with Dr Scott Bourn, president of the National Association of EMS Educators, supported by Mike Taignan, Associate Professor in the Emergency Health Services Management graduate program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Dr David Williams, Executive Director at the US Institute for Health Improvement, and Prof Siriwardena from CaHRU.
The preconference course began with an overview of the day by Dr Scott Bourn. This was followed by Dave Williams leading a session on the science of improvement including the ‘red bead experiment’ and an outline of Deming’s theory of profound knowledge. Niro Siriwardena led a session on understanding the model for improvement and Mike Taigman helped delegates get to grips with the plan-do-study-act cycle using the coin-spinning game. The later sessions were focussed on application of these ideas to selecting a good project, identifying measures, developing a measurement strategy, managing change and understanding what changes will result in an improvement faciltated by other faculty members including Joseph Grover MD, Jeffrey L. Jarvis, MD, MS, EMT-P, Kevin Mackey, MD, FACEP, Kim D McKenna, PhD, RN, EMT-P, and James “Tripp” Winslow, MD, MPH.
The day will be followed by a year-long course for around 25 delegates from the US and Canada who will take part in monthly moderated online educational sessions on key aspects of quality improvement, read relevant articles and conduct a ‘capstone project to implement quality improvement methods to a problem in their agency or system, supported by a mentor from the course faculty to help guide their progress. Participants will present their work to colleagues and members of the NAEMSP community to share the impact of quality improvement.
The preconference has been summarised by Dr Catherine Counts, one of the delegates in a blog entitled: ‘Quick take: Quality and safety gain prominence at NAEMSP‘.
[su_document url=”https://communityandhealth.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2018/01/FLYER-QI-2018.pdf” width=”640″ responsive=”no”]Multi-morbidity, goal-oriented care, the community and equity[/su_document]