Congratulations to our 2020/21 trauma quality improvement facilitator course graduates

Congratulations to the 11 participants who completed this year’s Health Quality & Safety Commission trauma quality improvement facilitator course. The graduation and celebration event was held online due to COVID-19 on 25 February 2021.

The quality improvement facilitator course is tailored specifically for staff working in trauma care across New Zealand. It is delivered by Ko Awatea, the Centre for Innovation and Improvement at Counties Manukau Health on behalf of the Health Quality & Safety Commission.

Participants start with very little or no experience in the knowledge, skills and application of quality improvement methodologies but, through the course, they learn about those methodologies and tools to help them implement quality and safety improvement projects in local trauma services. Topics covered include process mapping, Ishikawa (fishbone) cause and effect diagrams, plan–do–study–act (PDSA) tests of change, run charts and data analysis.

Despite the disruption by the COVID-19 pandemic, all graduating participants successfully met the course learning requirements, and achieved positive outcomes for their organisations in one of the three priority areas of major haemorrhage, trauma rehabilitation and severe traumatic brain injury.

Two participants undertook projects relating to major haemorrhage, seven selected trauma rehabilitation and two focused on traumatic brain injury. You can view the project summaries here.

In the last session of the course participants shared their progress and reflected on what they had learned. They identified three common success factors:

• Teamwork, particularly multi/transdisciplinary working relationships.
• Identifying both processes that already work and new processes proven to now work.
• Small changes producing large gains.

Congratulations to all graduates and their project sponsors and teams for their excellent work this year.

Thanks also to the course facilitators and quality improvement advisors from Ko Awatea.

2020/21 trauma quality improvement facilitator course graduates