PGCert in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement

The course will appeal to doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, managers and others who have an interest in patient safety and quality improvement.

By taking the Postgraduate Certificate in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement, you will gain a deeper understanding of the factors influencing patient safety, learn how to investigate safety problems and how to make care safer. You will also learn about quality improvement approaches and how to better understand our complex healthcare systems so as to improve quality of care across multiple domains, such as outcomes, patient experience and timeliness. You will gain an understanding of:

• How to take a broad, systems view of the care system you want to understand and improve, including how to develop insight into technical, human and organisational dimensions of an improvement or safety challenge
• The underlying principles behind the sometimes-confusing array of quality improvement methods, each with their own advocates and jargon, learning how these methods relate to one another and how they fit into an overarching model of quality improvement
• How to measure different aspects of quality and care systems
• Why changes that initially succeed will, more often than not, degrade over time – and what works to prevent this so that initial changes are sustained and further improvement can be built upon them
• Approaches for understanding and improving safety in healthcare including human factors, design and ergonomics

There is a growing evidence base that quality improvement and human factors-based projects in healthcare have real impact on clinical outcomes for patients. The University of Oxford has a strong research base in patient safety, and this course benefits from the researchers’ intensive collaboration with clinicians.

You will attend two core modules and one optional module. The core modules are:

• Quality Improvement Science and Systems Analysis
• Human Factors, Teamwork and Communication.

Your optional module is chosen from:

• Leadership and Management in Health Care
• Becoming a Clinical Educator
• Healthcare Innovation and Technology

Each module includes a period of preparatory study and one week of full time, face-to-face teaching in Oxford, which is then followed by a period for assignment work. The modules can be studied in any order and each module normally takes place once a year giving you the opportunity to individualise your patterns of study.

The taught week is an intensive week of seminar-style teaching, class discussions, guest lectures, interaction with tutors and lecturers, workshops and practical sessions.

In the four weeks running up to each taught week you should expect to dedicate 4-6 hours per week to preparatory reading. In the six weeks following each taught week you should expect to dedicate 10-15 hours per week to researching and writing your module assignment.

Attendance

This course is part-time. You will be required to attend a week of face-to-face teaching in Oxford for each module. 

Resources to support your study

The Rewley House Continuing Education Library, one of the Bodleian Libraries, is situated in Rewley House. The department aims to support the wide variety of subjects covered by departmental courses at many academic levels. The department also has a collection of around 73,000 books together with periodicals. PCs in the library give access to the internet and the full range of electronic resources subscribed to by the University of Oxford. The Jessop Reading Room adjoining the library is available for study.

The department provides various IT facilities, including the Student Computing Facility which provides individual PCs for your use. 

Supervision

The allocation of graduate supervision for this course is the responsibility of the Department for Continuing Education and/or the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, and this role will usually be performed by the Course Director.

It is not always possible to accommodate the preferences of incoming graduate students to work with a particular member of staff. Under exceptional circumstances a supervisor may be found outside the Department for Continuing Education and/or the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences.

Assessment

Students must complete two core modules and one optional module, taken in any order.

To complete the PGCert in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement, you will need to:

• attend the two core and one optional modules in Oxford;
• undertake and pass an assessed written assignment for each module.

The written assignments help you develop and demonstrate your growing knowledge and understanding of the subject areas covered, and will provide you with the opportunity to develop your critical appraisal and written presentation skills. The assignments are usually set such that they are an opportunity to apply what you have learned to your own work setting or practice, helping you translate classroom learning to your own context.

You will need to be able to write a good standard of academic English to pass the assignments. For those that require a refresher, the Department of Continuing Education offers a 10-week, online course to refresh and improve your reading, note-making and essay-writing skills. You will be given written feedback on each of the assignments you submit, intended to help you continue to develop your critical appraisal and academic writing skills.

Graduate destinations

Most students taking the course are in full-time employment. The PGCert aims to support you in pursuing a career in higher levels of nursing, medical and general management with a specific interest in patient safety and quality improvement.

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