Certificate Program in Patient Safety and Quality | Center for Scholarship in Patient Care Quality and Safety | University of Washington

UW Medicine and Seattle Children’s Hospital partner to create safer care environments.

The Certificate Program in Patient Safety and Quality is an innovative training opportunity run jointly by Seattle Children’s Hospital and the UW Medicine Center for Scholarship in Patient Care Quality and Safety. The program builds a cadre of healthcare professionals from all backgrounds with the skills to identify gaps and deploy improvements to the effectiveness, efficiency, equity, and value of care delivery. Participants will also develop the skills to effectively disseminate their work and build a track record of scholarship in patient safety and quality.

Certificate Program participants learn the foundational elements of equity, quality, safety, and value.

Participants develop skills to implement quality, safety, equity, and value innovations in their clinical units and departments and disseminate their results. Those skills include how to:

• Define and coordinate care that promotes quality, safety, value, diversity, equity, and inclusion. 
• Keep the interests of the patient and family at the center of the care conversation.
• Rigorously define and critically evaluate project outcomes.
• Serve as a change leader to ensure rapid implementation of patient safety and quality interventions. 

Course Curriculum

The eight month program consists of six full day conferences and project-related work. Participants learn core quality, safety, and equity principles and gain hands-on experience through project implementation. Working in project teams or independently, participants develop real-world skills by implementing quality and safety projects throughout the eight month course. At the end of the program, participants present their projects to local leadership via platform presentations and/or at a poster session. See quality and safety project titles from past class years here. We are offering CME/CNE credits for attending the Certificate Program this year for those who would like to claim them. If you or your project team would like robust mentorship and data support during the Certificate Program, please consider applying to the QI Project Accelerator. 

Topics covered at the daylong conferences include: 

• Principles of Quality Improvement and Patient Safety
• Disparities Related to Racism in Medicine and Society
• Local/Regional/National Landscape of Quality and Safety
• Healthcare Value
• Learning from Preventable Adverse Events 
• Applying an Equity Lens to Healthcare Improvement
• Research vs. Quality Improvement
• Error Disclosure/Risk Management/Resilience Principles
• Leadership and Change Management
• Responding to Bias and Microaggressions
• SQUIRE Guidelines for Publishing
• Information Technology and Patient Safety
• Diagnostic Error

Course Objectives

We anticipate that at the end of the course, participants will be capable of meaningful participation in institution-wide quality improvement efforts, able to lead local quality improvement projects, and prepared to disseminate their scholarly quality improvement work on a local, regional, and national level.