The 29 learners who started their quality improvement journey a year ago as part of the Teachers of Quality Academy (TQA) 8.0 cohort officially wrapped up their participation in the program at a recognition ceremony Oct. 22. While the ceremony marked the end of the cohort’s formal learning sessions in the program, the multidisciplinary group of health care professionals is now poised to take their knowledge back to their workspaces with the goal of driving continuous quality improvement across ECU Health and the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University.
TQA is a professional development program for health care leaders designed to fundamentally change care delivery through a curriculum focused on building knowledge and skills in Health Systems Science which comprehensively explores how health care is delivered.
“We hope the biggest take away from this last year of learning is the importance of taking what they’ve learned back to their teams so they can apply their knowledge and skills to be catalysts for positive change in their local communities and local teams,” said Dr. Jennifer Sutter, TQA physician director. “This is a diverse group of professionals who represent many different parts of the health system so we’re confident they can have a broad impact on driving quality improvement for ECU Health and those we serve.”
The 8.0 cohort included health care professionals from clinical, administrative, leadership and educational backgrounds, all of whom were selected from a highly-competitive pool of applicants.
“The work that we do in health care is purposeful work, but nobody would define it as easy,” said Dr. Niti Armistead, chief medical officer and chief quality officer at ECU Health, during remarks at the recognition ceremony. “What I’ve found in my own quality journey is that quality improvement is the antidote to burnout by converting the burrs in the saddle into problems to be solved. Quality improvement is a way to re-establish your agency and feel like there are real things you can do to drive improvement and make a positive difference.”
Throughout the past year, participants engaged in advanced learning in quality improvement, patient safety and team leadership, develop improvement projects to apply these skills across the health system, teach others in their environment about these concepts and evaluate the outcomes of improvement interventions.
Lauren Chambers, pharmacy supervisor at ECU Health Medical Center, and Brynn Schiller, who started the program as an administrative fellow but now serves as a workforce development project manager, partnered together on a project aimed at improving hyperglycemia management for medical intensive care unit patients. Hyperglycemia, otherwise known as high blood sugar, can result in organ damage and other serious complications if not treated and managed quickly and effectively.
Chambers said that when the two were deciding which project to pursue, they wanted to be bold and pursue something meaningful and sustainable. For Chambers and Schiller, their hope is that others will take advantage of the opportunities provided through TQA to explore important topics in areas meaningful to them while making important connections along the way.
“You learn a lot about yourself and you get to connect with people you don’t normally connect with,” said Schiller. “I got to know Lauren who is clinical in pharmacy. My background is not clinical so it was really interesting to work together on a project where I didn’t know a lot but I learned a lot thanks to our work on the project together.”