The Open School network is growing — and our Regional Leaders are here to support Open School Chapters whether they’re just starting or well-established. What do Regional Leaders do? They’re long-time members of the Open School who can help Chapters on a one-to-one basis. Contact them when you have questions about planning events, finding resources in the Open School, connecting with other Chapters in your region, or brainstorming activities for your Chapter.

To highlight the expertise of our Regional Leaders, we’re bringing you the Meet a Regional Leader series on this blog. We started with Sarah Miano, RN, in the Midwest US, and today we bring you five questions for Jo Inge Myhre, MD, who supports Continental Europe from Oslo, Norway.

1. Why did you go into health care?

Good question. I’m not sure, to be honest. My godmother was a nurse who worked in the offshore industry, and I always admired her, but where my fascination came from, I'm not really sure. At one point I was considering studying botany, but my biology teacher told me that it was easier to have plants as a hobby in comparison to taking care of sick people, and that made sense.

2. Why does quality improvement matter to you?

I have been working on improvement since I started medical school, and for me it is a crucial part of health care. Constantly improving the system we work in is an obligation for all health care professionals. We can't continue making the same errors over and over again and keep working in broken systems.

3. What was your best moment with the Open School community?

I remember when our local Chapter was invited to help with the translation of the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist into Norwegian. It was such a weird moment to actually get recognition as a student for the work we had been doing.

I also have many Forum experiences. The greatest was probably the first Asia Pacific Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care in New Zealand, were a local group of students had done an amazing job to put together a great student program. The discussions we had were just amazing.

4. Tell us something that most people don’t know about you.

I have a thing for studying on public transportation. In my last semester of medical school I was absolutely sure that I was going to fail, so I figured I needed massive doses of traveling time. This resulted in trips to San Francisco, the Dominican Republic, Paris, and Estonia in my last five months of med school. I'm still positive that's what got me through in the end.

5. What one piece of advice would you give a new Chapter?

Find some friends, and if you make an event always plan for the next one. If you get people interested you need to give them some sort of follow up.

Say hello to Jo Inge at ce.ihi.openschool(at)gmail.com.