Courses

Leading Patient Safety: Essentials for Managers and Directors

Format:

Online

Begins:

Sep 01, 2026

Duration:

14 weeks

Fee:

$995

Groups of 3 or more:

$846

View the recording and slides from a recent informational call.

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Please review our Cancellation Policy

*Prices are listed in USD. Group prices are listed as per-person.

Lead the Way to Safer Care

At IHI, we believe safety is not an add-on, it’s the foundation of better care. This new, practical, and high-impact course is designed for managers and directors ready to elevate their leadership in patient and workforce safety. Strengthen your leadership to build safer, more reliable systems every day, for every patient, and every staff member. Unlike other courses that focus narrowly on compliance or technical fixes, this course goes further. It equips frontline and mid-level leaders to apply proactive strategies, systems thinking, and human factors to transform daily operations and prevent harm.

Did you miss the last informational call? Watch the recording and review the slides.

What You'll Learn

Who Should Attend

Session Faculty

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Bryce Clark, MPA, BSN/RN, CPHQ is the Director of Patient Care Services for Inpatient Medical Units at Children’s Hospital Colorado. With a robust background in healthcare leadership, patient safety, and quality improvement, Bryce has dedicated his career to optimizing hospital operations, enhancing patient outcomes, and developing leaders. Before stepping into his current role, Bryce served as a clinical manager of one of Children Colorado’s inpatient medical units, where he spearheaded initiatives to improve pediatric mental health care, reduce turnover, and maintain high team engagement. Prior to that, Bryce worked in a variety of patient safety and improvement roles, where he led improvement efforts that significantly reduced hospital-acquired conditions, developed organizational safety strategies, and educated leaders on improvement science. Bryce holds a Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ) credential and earned an Executive MPA from New York University, a BSN from Johns Hopkins University, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

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Orysia Bezpalko Hernandez is the Harm Prevention & Safety Improvement Manager at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). In her role within CHOP's Patient Safety team, Orysia leads teams in strengthening systems and processes to achieve safer care for patients and reduced rates of healthcare-associated harm through the use of quality improvement and human factors methodologies. She serves as a national subject matter expert in proactive safety and safety culture through the Solutions for Patient Safety pediatric hospital collaborative, and has a particular interest in the ways in which human cognition and decision making can both support and be supported by better system design. Orysia holds a BA in English and an MS in Behavioral Science from the University of Pennsylvania, an MPH from Drexel University's Dornsife School of Public Health, and is a certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt.

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Dr. Daniel Hyman is a transformational healthcare leader with a distinguished career dedicated to enhancing the safety and quality of patient care. He has held executive leadership roles at renowned institutions, including Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, and Children’s Hospital Colorado.

Dr. Hyman began his career as a general pediatrician, spending 13 years in primary care practice. During this time, he received training in quality improvement methodologies and successfully applied them in his practice. His expertise led to broader leadership roles, first regionally as Medical Director for Children’s Health Net at CHOP and later nationally with the National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality (NICHQ).

Over the next two decades, Dr. Hyman held a series of hospital leadership positions, including Chief Medical Officer for Ambulatory Care and Chief Children’s Quality Officer at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. He then served as Chief Quality Officer and later as Chief Medical and Patient Safety Officer at Children’s Hospital Colorado before returning to CHOP as Chief Safety and Quality Officer. In these roles, he played a pivotal role in hospital operations beyond safety and quality programs, including accreditation, peer review, medical staff credentialing, professionalism, and policy development.

Dr. Hyman earned his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed his pediatric residency at CHOP. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Medical Management (MMM) from Tulane University. He is a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and holds retired status as Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

In addition to his hospital leadership roles, Dr. Hyman has contributed significantly at the national level. He has served on the Clinical Steering Team for the Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety Network and co-chaired its Measurement Committee. He co-founded and co-directed the Academic Pediatric Association (APA) Quality and Safety Improvement Scholars Program and has held board and leadership positions with the Children’s Hospital Association and its predecessor organizations.

Dr. Hyman remains active in education and mentorship. He teaches in the Center for Healthcare Improvement and Patient Safety (CHIPS) program at Penn, where he developed and continues to direct a Master’s-level course on leadership in quality and safety in healthcare systems. He is also a proud faculty member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, contributing to their safety improvement initiatives.

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Leah Konwinski, MS, CPE is a health care embedded Human Factors Engineer and the Director of Human Factors and Innovation at Corewell Health in Michigan. Leah is responsible for driving the organization’s proactive improvement strategy for patient safety, quality, and experience. She and her team specialize in leveraging human-centered systems analysis and participatory design to achieve breakthrough improvement. Their applied research centers around applying resilience engineering and human factors methods to better understand and solve for barriers to simple, satisfying, and safe work. She is internationally recognized as a deep thinker and practitioner of human factors and ergonomics, and a passionate advocate for human-centered design in the healthcare field.

Before her tenure in healthcare, Leah worked in the automotive, food production, aviation, engineering, and product design industries, bringing ergonomics and human factors insights into many design and improvement initiatives. Leah received her Bachelor of Science with Honors from the University of Guelph and her Masters of Human Kinetics with a focus on Biomechanics and Human Factors from the University of Windsor, both in Ontario, Canada. Leah is a Certified Professional Ergonomist, a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the Resilience Engineering Association, and the Human Factors Transforming Healthcare group.

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Dr. David Munch has been an IHI faculty member for many years teaching in the Patient Safety Executive (PSE) program, Leading Quality Improvement, Engaging Managers in Quality (LQI) program, numerous IHI National Forums and many international IHI patient safety programs. In addition, he has helped numerous health systems over the past 12 years with their Lean quality improvement implementations.  During that time, he has been an instructor for the Belmont University Lean Healthcare Certificate program and prior to that, the University of Michigan Lean Certificate program, focusing on leadership and management systems development.  He served as the COO, CQO and CMO from 2000 to 2009 at Exempla Lutheran Medical Center. He spent 8 years on The Quality Committee of the Board for The Children's Hospital of Colorado. He has an extensive background in health system operations and clinical practice and currently advises several health systems in their management systems development journeys.

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Jennifer L. Wiler, MD, MBA is a tenured Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Co-Founder of the UCHealth CARE Innovation Center. She is nationally recognized as an expert in quality and safety, healthcare operations, payment policy, and was named by Becker’s Healthcare a “Top 26 Patient Safety Expert to Know” in 2022. Dr. Wiler was appointed by the U.S. Governmental Accountability Office to serve on the Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC), a federal expert panel within the Department of Health and Human Service which consults to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). She has also served in numerous state and national leadership positions including Chair of the American Medical Association Women Physicians Congress which represents all women physicians and representative for the American College of Emergency Physicians to the AMA RBRVS Updates Committee (RUC) an expert advisory panel to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for nearly a decade. Dr. Wiler has authored over 75 peer-reviewed papers and is senior editor of the book “Value and Quality Innovations in Acute and Emergency Care” (Cambridge Press, 2017), and has won numerous national awards including being named the “Emergency Physician of the Year” for Pennsylvania, a “Nation’s Top Emergency Physicians 45 Under 45”, an American Medical Association “Inspirational Physician”, and the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) “Inspire Award”. She was the Chief Quality Officer for UCHealth Metro and a Professor at the University of Colorado Denver School of Business.

James Won is the Director of Human Factors and Systems Design for the Center for Healthcare Quality and Analytics (CHQA) at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), Adjunct Assistant Professor for the Perelman School of Medicine and the School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Injury Research and Prevention. His previous work contributed to the development of a safe and efficient national airspace system (NAS) for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other government research efforts. He is passionate about keeping the human at the forefront of every system by bridging the gap between work as imagined and work as done.

Testimonial

Additional Resources

Through immersive learning, you’ll gain the tools to coach teams effectively, embed reliability and resilience into daily practice, and lead with clarity in both routine operations and times of change. You will examine practices for both identifying and reducing risks to prevent things from going wrong (Safety-I), as well as practices that emphasize anticipating variability, supporting everyday work, and strengthening systems to ensure things go right (Safety-II).

This is more than a course; it’s a catalyst for leaders who want to transform their microsystem and contribute to a culture where patients and staff alike can thrive.

Making the Case: Download the Justification Letter to provide high-level information on the Leading Patient Safety: Essentials for Managers and Directors

Session Agenda

The course consists of 9 online lessons and 8 live webinars. The agenda for this offering is available to download:

IHI Leading Patient Safety September 2026 Agenda

Continuing Education

In support of improving patient care, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the health care team.

This program is approved to provide 16 credits for physicians, nurses, pharmacists, quality and risk professionals, and Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS) recertification.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement designates this live activity for a maximum of 16 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. This activity may also be applicable for other professions that accept AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™.

This meeting has been approved for a total of 16.0 contact hours of Continuing Education Credit toward fulfillment of the requirements of ASHRM designations of FASHRM (Fellow) and DFASHRM (Distinguished Fellow) and towards CPHRM renewal.

This activity is approved by NAHQ® for 16 CPHQ CE credits.

A growing list of countries accept ACCME-accredited education. 

As a result of this program, attendees will be able to:

Describe the skills, tools, and resources needed to effectively and reliably coach and guide your teams to enhance safety for patients and staff.
Align department-level safety improvement activities to the organization’s goals and overall strategic plan.
Improve safety culture and process reliability to successfully partner with front-line staff and other partners.
Distinguish Safety-I and Safety-II approaches to patient safety - recognizing that Safety-I focuses on identifying and reducing risks and preventing things from going wrong, while Safety-II emphasizes anticipating variability, supporting everyday work, and strengthening systems so things go right.
Articulate the complementary value of combining reactive/protective approaches with proactive/productive ones.
Apply the core components and principles of a fair and just culture to identify and solve problems.
Incorporate strategies of change management, reliability, and resilience into standard work to enhance sensitivity to operations and promote safety in your areas of responsibility.

Instructions

To be eligible for a continuing education certificate, attendees must complete the online evaluation within 30 days of the continuing education activity. After this period, you will be unable to receive a certificate.

Continuing education credits will not be awarded for non-educational activities, including (but not limited to) meals, breaks and receptions.

Planning Committee

Bryce Clark, MPA, BSN/RN, CPHQ, Director Patient Care Services, Children’s Hospital Colorado

Orysia Bezpalko Hernandez, MS, MPH, Harm Prevention and Safety Improvement Manager, Children’s Hospital Philadelphia

Daniel Hyman, MD, MMM, Faculty, IHI

Leah Konwinski, MS, CPE, Director Human Factors and Innovation, Corewell Health
Jennifer Lenoci-Edwards, BSN, RN, MPH, Vice President, IHI

David Munch, MD, Faculty, IHI

Katherine Rowbotham, Director of Accreditation, IHI

Jennifer Wiler, MD, MBA, Professor, Emergency Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine

James Won, PhD, MS, Human Factors, Mechanical Engineering, Director Human Factors and System Integration, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Disclosure: None of the planners, presenters, or staff for this educational activity have relevant financial relationship(s) to disclose with ineligible companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.

Fees and Scholarships

Registration Rates

Includes 9 online lessons and 8 live hour-long webinars to reinforce, discuss and apply content covered during the online lessons. Prices are listed in USD.

Regular rate: $995 per person

Group of 3 or more: $846 per person
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Scholarships

IHI is pleased to offer a limited number of 25% and 100% scholarships to assist with program registration costs for those working in:  

Independent, United States Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) that are not affiliated with a hospital or health system

Critical Access Hospitals

Independent practices with fewer than 20 physicians

Hospitals with fewer than 50 beds

Members of America's Essential Hospitals

501(c)(3) organization with a defined operating budget of less than $5 million, serving community-based populations

Ministries of Health

Faith-based health institutions

Skilled Nursing Facilities

To apply for a scholarship, please complete the online Scholarship Application by August 4, 2026. IHI will not consider applications submitted after this date.

Scholarship decisions will be announced on August 7, 2026.

All Scholarships are reviewed on an individual basis. If multiple individuals from the same organization wish to apply for a scholarship, each individual must submit an application.   

To ensure equal distribution of funds, all scholarship applications are reviewed using the same scoring criteria. All awarded amounts are final.  

Please note, scholarships are available for program registration costs only, and do not cover travel, food, or accommodation costs associated with attending a program.    

Logistics

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Leading Patient Safety: Essentials for Managers and Directors