The Open School is offering a new course on leadership skills to enable communities to improve health. With this eight-week course, Leadership and Organizing for Population Health, we’re testing a new format that features week-by-week lessons, video lectures, virtual meetings, and peer review of assignments. Health students must apply by Jan. 15, 2015 to take the free course, which begins on Feb. 15.As part of the course, students learn to tell personal stories that motivate others to take actio ... read full post

Students present their work at the IHI Open School Chapter Congress.Whew. The IHI Open School team is back in our Cambridge office after our biggest event of the year — the National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care. Last week, more than 5,000 health leaders descended one of the world’s largest Marriott hotels, in Orlando, Florida, to teach and learn from each other. We heard from writer and surgeon Atul Gawande, MD; Good Morning America host and cancer survivor Robin Roberts; and Don ... read full post

How can you foster a life-long passion for quality improvement (QI)? Wake Forest University is betting on an early start. Wake Forest University School of Medicine, located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is one of the latest academic medical centers to integrate the IHI Open School’s quality and safety courses into its curriculum. The school has long involved residents and fellows in QI work, and, this fall, they’ve begun teaching QI to first-year medical students — in their second week of ... read full post

Florentina Teoderascu, a medical student from the University of Toronto, is this year’s David Calkins Memorial Scholarship winner. Florentina’s essay, describing a blood-specimen mix up in a pediatric intensive care unit and the improvement project she led in response, won her free registration to the Annual IHI National Forum and a $1,000 travel stipend.Every year, IHI offers this scholarship in memory of David Calkins, MD, MPP, a physician, teacher, IHI Fellow, and health care improvement cham ... read full post

The University of New England’s (UNE) Open School Chapter, called the Interprofessional Student Advisory Team, has been hard at work promoting team-based care on their campus, which includes programs in multiple health professions. This year, they hosted a local case competition, where students analyze a health care situation and offer recommendations. They required students who participated to complete the IHI Open School Basic Certificate as a prerequisite. They asked students to complete self ... read full post