Foundations in Health Quality Improvement

Become a Leader in Healthcare Quality

Queen’s Foundations in Health Quality Improvement (FHQI) offers a pathway to drive meaningful change in healthcare. Designed with insights from nursing professionals and health quality experts, this program is perfect for nurses, nurse practitioners, administrators, and any healthcare professional who aspires to lead. With this course, you’ll strengthen your capacity to improve patient safety, navigate complex team dynamics, and influence quality care—whether from the position you're in now or a future leadership role.

In this six-module professional development program, you'll gain essential quality improvement (QI) skills to identify issues, implement solutions, and sustain high-performance healthcare systems. Start with foundational terminology and move to practical applications, such as fishbone diagrams and Pareto charts, helping you excel in interprofessional collaboration and patient-centered care. This course will also empower you to understand and implement change management techniques, embed safety within systems, and prepare for impactful leadership roles in healthcare quality.

Fee: $395 CAD per learner

Duration: Six self-paced modules, completed in about 10 hours

View a sneak peek of the program modules

Key Program Highlights

Comprehensive Quality Improvement Training: Covering topics from high-performance teams to effective change management, each module equips you to create safer, more efficient healthcare systems.
Leadership-Focused Content: Learn strategies to enhance your influence in policy and quality management, ideal for current and aspiring healthcare leaders.
Interdisciplinary Approach: Explore the importance of collaboration, communication, and human factors to effectively lead teams toward improved patient outcomes.

History & Context

Module Outline:

Section 01: What are Quality, Risk, and Safety?
Section 02: History of the Patient Safety Movement
Section 03: Improving QRS
Section 04: QRS and COVID-19

On successful completion of Module 01, learners will be able to:

Describe the historical, current, and future state of QRS.
Identify the interrelationship of QRS.
Apply a QRS lens to explore systems.

Identifying Quality, Safety, and Risk Problems

Module Outline:

Section 01: Quality Improvement Frameworks and Tools
Section 02: Tools to Assess the Problem
Section 03: Problem and Aim Statements

On successful completion of Module 02, learners will be able to:

Apply the appropriate tools to assess quality improvement (QI).
Discuss when and how to use a project charter.
Identify ways to determine the problem, aim, and most effective interventions for a QI project.

Measuring Quality and Safety

Module Outline:

Section 01: Defining QI Measures and Data Collection
Section 02: Interpreting Run Charts
Section 03: Evaluating Measures of Organizational Safety

On successful completion of Module 03, learners will be able to:

Identify the various measures used in quality improvement (QI).
Explore appropriate measures to assess phenomena addressed within health quality projects.
Appropriately plan data collection activities.
Identify approaches to monitoring and measuring organizational health quality, risk, and safety

Engaging with Teams and Clients in Patient Safety

Module outline:

Section 01: Communication Principles and Patient Safety Incident Analysis
Section 02: Team Communication
Section 03: Building Effective Teams

On successful completion of Module 04, learners will be able to:

Describe how to respond to and disclose patient safety incidents.
Discuss how to build an effective Q I team.
Recognize ways to work with collaborative teams.
Explain methods to effectively share findings with the healthcare team and clients.
Develop a driver diagram.

Human Factors

Module outline:

Section 01: Human Factors (H F )
Section 02: Denise Melanson’s Story
Section 03: Attention, Cognitive Biases, and Heuristics
Section 04: Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (S E I P S ) Model
Section 05: H F and the COVID-19 Pandemic

On successful completion of Module 05, learners will be able to:

Describe how the human factors (H F ) discipline can be leveraged to advance quality, safety, and risk.
Apply a human factors lens to a quality, safety, and risk (Q R S ) problem.

Embedding and Sustaining Change in Organizations

Module outline:

Section 01: Building Quality Health Systems
Section 02: Policy to Enhance Quality
Section 03: Leadership
Section 04: Change Management

On successful completion of Module 06, learners will be able to:

Identify how to influence policy on quality.
Explore the difference between leadership and management.
Identify the role of leadership in advancing a quality agenda.
Explore appropriate change management approaches.
Examine the impact of organizational culture and change behaviour on advancing quality outcomes.

Accreditation Details

This online program is accredited by Queen’s University for 10 Self-Assessment learning hours for the Royal College, 10 Mainpro+ Credits in the Self-Learning Category for the CFPC and provides a certificate for 10 hours of professional development for all health professions.

Intended Audience

Any practicing or aspiring health professional would benefit from taking this course. This course is crafted for healthcare professionals who want to build or sharpen leadership skills and make a difference within their organizations. It will equip you to look at proposed and existing systems, see opportunities for quality improvement and improving patient safety, and be able to formulate solutions that would bring these improvements to fruition. This course is a step towards a team-based and more patient-centred kind of healthcare.

The overall goal of the research program is to conduct an active program of research in health services with a focus on improving quality of care, risk reduction, and patient safety. The majority of work focuses on advancing safe medication delivery both in Canada and internationally. Doctoral and postdoctoral work is focused on safe medication delivery in hospitals and the community.

Kim Sears, PhD, RN

Professor, Nursing and Health Quality Programs, Queen's University

Rylan has research projects in multiple different areas associated with both quality improvement and educational development. He is currently researching and developing knowledge translation and training resources within the area of Lyme disease diagnosis and treatment.

Rylan Egan, PhD

Associate Professor, Nursing and Health Quality Programs, Queen's University

Laura’s primary research interests are in the rigorous analysis of preventable patient harm incidents to identify learnings and system-level opportunities for improvement. Through personal and professional experiences, Laura has developed a passion for advocating with patients, families, and health professionals for a safer healthcare system.

While working towards her PhD, Laura continues in her roles as Manager of Quality, Safety & Clinical Adoption at University Health Network. Laura also contributes to research at Cardiff University as an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow.

Laura Pozzobon, RN, MScHQ, CHE

PhD (Health Quality) student at Queen’s University, Queen's University

Foundations in Health Quality Improvement

Become a Leader in Healthcare Quality

Fee: $400 Now $280 CAD per learner

Fee: $395 CAD per learner

View a sneak peek of the program modules

Course Details

Key Program Highlights

History & Context

Identifying Quality, Safety, and Risk Problems

Measuring Quality and Safety

Engaging with Teams and Clients in Patient Safety

Human Factors

Embedding and Sustaining Change in Organizations

Accreditation Details

Intended Audience

Content Experts

Kim Sears, PhD, RN

Rylan Egan, PhD

Laura Pozzobon, RN, MScHQ, CHE