Quality Management Education – Message and Structure by Design

It has been a while since I have been in a blog writing mood.  Too many things happening.  Over the next short while I expect we will be much more active.  My most recent experience has been in teaching Quality Management to laboratorians of all professions as part of our university's Continuing Professional Development program

Our Virtual Classroom On-Line Education (VCOLE) course has been growing rapidly, to now almost double our enrolment of 2015.  This was in interesting lesson for me because I have always been resistant to allowing the course to get larger than 25 participants because I thought that too many people would create chaos in the classroom discussions.  I was convinced to be more open, and this year we had over 40 people, with physicians, technologists, quality managers, and administrators from multiple countries, and I was amazed at how well it worked.  Yes, there were some comments on overcrowded discussion sites, but we learned how to fix that, and it indeed worked excellently.  The participants really seemed to enjoy the course, and I know that their course colleagues will continue to be an important contact source for the participants as they develop their own contact networks.  It took a little bravery on my side, some risk/benefit analysis, and we came out with a success.  

In a similar vein, we were approached by an international health organization to see if we were interested in taking our course to South East Asia to deliver the course for an additional 26 Quality Managers and Laboratory Managers.  The challenge was that most of the group spoke little English and their internet access was usually unstable.  So with a little head scratching and some Deming-like Planning, we figured out to deliver the course not on-line, but on-site with the assist of some translators.  Rather than run the course for a continuous 21 weeks, as the current on-line course runs, we had to adapt the schedule to allow people to come together from across the country in a single place without disrupting their work.  (Also if I had decided to go to leave Canada for 21 weeks, I suspect my wife would have not been pleased).  So we settled on 1 week every six months, with continuity plans built in.  That meant maintaining the content of the on-line course, but adapting it to 3 very intensive weeks that included content, presentations, discussion, assignments, quizzes and a final exam.  

As with every plan it needed some tweaking along the way (call that Plan-Do-Study-Act) but it was amazing how well it came together.  The group stayed intact, their performance evolved to a very productive point, and their reviews at the end were in the range of 88% high level success.  

All it took was a little innovation, creativity, planning and impetus, but I suspect that you would all say that if every plan was put together with the same tools, the outcome would be fairly predictable.  

This has been a very busy time for all our mentors and staff, and for me.  And it took a lot of background administration to bring it all together but this is what I learned:

• Health organizations around the world are increasingly aware to the Costs associated with Poor Quality.
• The appetite for Quality Management training in the laboratory area continues to grow.
• People want the knowledge
• Their institutions want the knowledge
• The public demands the knowledge.
• More and more institutions are prepared to support their staff participating in courses that are designed to deliver. 
• Quality Management courses can and should be delivered in a variety of appropriate organizations and institutions, including universities.
• The impact of the Quality education impacts the people that take the course, their staff, their customers, their family members, their organizations and institutions and public health.
  
  
• The sharing of knowledge is profoundly positive and enriching on all sides. 

So now we have one course in Laboratory Quality Management that is ready to go in two formats, both on-line and on-site.  We know there is an audience and with two proven approaches, we are ready to continue on. 

Burn-out is NOT an option.

For more information visit: www.POLQM.ca

The Quality Tree Reenvisioned.

A teaching exercise (and more)

So I was going through my regular update and revision exercise for my presentation files.  I find it I don’t do this regularly, they can get very stale, and I get bored talking and teaching about Quality.  I suspect that I am not alone.

Anyways the target audience this time is medical laboratory physician trainees.  I don’t think I am giving away any secrets when I say that this is always a tough audience.  Most of this group have a singular attitude about quality which is unfortunately “What????  DKDC!!!”  or, for those uninitiated, “Don’t Know and Don’t Care”.  

It is usually, almost always the case that Quality issues are never front-of-mind until they are in positions of responsibility and confronted with a problem, usually an unhappy doc or patient of staff member who has become entangled with an laboratory error, and find themselves trying to dig themselves out of a mess.  (It’s the same with safety)

Fortunately we are able to get enough face-time that they may have some idea about where to start.

So one of the concepts that I have worked with over the years is the Quality Tree.  Don’t think of Quality as a pyramid with Policy being at the tip-top and its effect trickling down; rather, invert that pyramid and put Policy at the bottom, as the foundation, with its impact shoring up the rest of the process.  From there it was an easy step to creating an analogy as a Quality Tree with the roots that give support and nourishment as Policy.

But recently as a result of our working on and achieving the recent certification of our laboratory’s quality system to ISO9001:2015 (YAY !!!), I realized that this was a good step in the right direction, but was still incomplete.

Organizational Quality does NOT start at the level of Policy making; it starts with asking the most basic of questions,” (1) who are we and (2) what are we doing, and (3) what do we want to be when we grow up?”  

Quality starts with Top Management envisioning the organization’s Mission and Vision and setting the organization’s Goals and Objectives. 

Once those are in place, then all the rest can and will logically and consistently  follow.  

For the purpose of this re-positioning of activities, I set up a set of definitions, that work and make sense.  Mission and Vision are general statements about who we are, what we are doing, and what we want to become.   

Goals and Objectives follow on from the Mission and Vision, and are very specific and focused on what we expect  to be doing now, and in the near and intermediate future.   

Mission and Vision and Goal and Objectives  are the real drivers of our Policies and our Quality System.  This is what really nourishes Quality.

Once those are in place we can create policies and processes that are consistent with our plan, and procedures that follow.  The fruits of our labour are not only our products and services, but our Quality message as well.  And we can then point to our need to disseminate that message, through a clear and distinct error-free and consistent documentation pathway.  

And Top Management is the gardener whose task it is to care for and nourish the Quality Tree and ensure that it remains healthy and vital and strong.  

I know this is sounding pretty “in the weed’ish” but in my mind it all becomes clear through my new Quality Tree picture.  

Quality is like every other subject that has both academic and practical applications.  I don’t think these applications can be easily separated.  If thinking people don’t understand the foundations, then applying the practical rules is done only by rote, and all too often gets screwed up.  And equally important, if the academic purists don’t appreciate that Quality is not theoretical, it has to be applicable in a way that makes sense.

So for me, the picture works.

If, upon consideration, it also works for you, use it. I put it out here in the spirit of open access.  

Or maybe I have too much time on my hands.

Our 2017 October Quality Conference is coming together nicely

Sunday October 1 – Tuesday October 3, 2017

All our subjects are in place

All our speakers are in place

Our venue is contracted 

http://conference.polqm.ca 

More news to come.