Your service: assessing quality

This 50-hour online course is aimed at doctors, nurses or allied health professionals working within the health service at various stages in their careers. It is a self-contained introduction to issues and approaches relevant to assessing the quality of health services at the level of an individual service, practice or department, with a view to identifying how to improve service quality. To obtain the maximum benefit, you should previously have completed two 25-hour online courses, entitled What is clinical leadership? (GB080) and Developing yourself for clinical leadership (GB081). Further 25-hour and 50-hour courses in the OU BMJ Clinical Leadership series follow on from this course. However, this course can also be usefully studied on its own.

What you will study

This course, like the whole series, is for clinicians who want to understand what leadership means for them. It is not intended only or even primarily for clinicians who wish to take on full-time medical or clinical management positions. It is for those who recognise that developing health services to meet current challenges requires practising clinicians to show leadership in a variety of ways, working alongside health service managers.

This course addresses fundamental issues of understanding the nature of service quality, including the need to find creative ways of reconciling different perceptions of quality and building commitment to directions for improving it. No matter what the stage of your career, or your level of formal responsibility for the quality of service delivery, this course should help you develop new insights into how effectively you and your colleagues are delivering the service you are responsible for. It will help you develop your understanding of how the perceptions of your clinical colleagues, of patients and service users, and of service managers are all relevant to building a rounded picture of service quality and identifying directions for improving it.

You will learn

On completing the course you will be able to describe different aspects of quality in healthcare and evaluate their relevance to the services you provide, including identifying tensions between them. You will also be aware of models of service quality improvement commonly applied in health care, and appreciate the range and nature of data sources that can be used to describe quality. You will also gain some experience in applying a set of analytical methods and techniques – such as run charts and Pareto analysis - in working with data for assessing service quality.

Entry

Although there are no formal academic requirements to study any of our CPD courses, you are expected to have some experience in the field and the course assumes a familiarity with the subject. However If you want to go on to complete the Postgraduate Certificate in Clinical Leadership (K04) it is required that you hold an honours degree or equivalent.

This course has been developed in conjunction with BMJ Learning. If you register for this course, they would like to contact you about further learning opportunities. If you do not want to receive information from BMJ, please mark the relevant opt-out box on your registration agreement.

You can register and begin this course at any time during the life of the course. You can study at your own pace and submit your work-based activity at any date before the final submission date for the course. Information about the final submission date is available when you register for the course.

GB084 counts towards the assessment module Leading health service delivery and improvement (B832), which forms part of the Postgraduate Certificate in Clinical Leadership (K04).  If you are working towards this postgraduate qualification you have two choices.  You can either complete some or all of the requisite CPD courses prior to registering for B832 or you can register for B832 and the CPD courses at the same time, following a recommended study pattern. Please be aware that the latter option will require you to commit to approximately 12 hours of study per week so you may wish to consider this when making your choice.

If you have any doubt about the suitability of the course, please contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.

Outside the UK

This course has been written primarily for a UK context, but will have relevance to other contexts.

If you have a disability

The study materials are delivered online. Learners who use screen readers or who cannot use a mouse will not be able to access some materials or some activities without assistance. Written transcripts of the audio interviews are available on the website. If you are a new learner with the OU, make sure that you have our publication Meeting Your Needs.

Study materials

What's included

All learning materials, exercises, study support and work-based activity are delivered entirely online.

Computing requirements

You will need a computer with internet access to study this course as it includes online activities, which you can access using a web browser.

• If you have purchased a new desktop or laptop computer since 2007 you should have no problems completing the online activities.
• If you’ve got a netbook, tablet or other mobile computing device check our Technical requirements section.
• If you use an Apple Mac you will need OS X 10.6 or later.

You can also visit the Technical requirements section for further computing information including the details of the support we provide.

Learner support

Expert, confidential learner support is available when you need it from a learning adviser, who will respond to you direct within 24 hours. Other support is available via the course forum, library, StudentHome website and computing helpdesk.

Work-based activity

The work-based activity for this course has been designed as an integrated ongoing activity that you submit at the end of your study. It will enable you to reflect on your learning and apply it to your professional work.

Your questions

Try our frequently asked questions.

Come and meet us at an event near you.

Or contact an adviser by Email or call +44(0) 845 300 60 90 +44(0) 845 366 60 35

Employers' questions

Contact Corporate Enquiries
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