NGR 6874 - Instructor/ Course Introduction

Instructor Introduction

Course Introduction

The course discusses systematic approaches and tools that can be used to analyze organization performance, problems, and improvement strategies introduced to measurement and evaluation of organizational performance.  For the past 23 years, since the 1999 IOM report To Err is Human was published, healthcare leaders have been challenged to improve patient safety. Today's healthcare leaders have very high expectations placed upon them to reduce harm and improve patient outcomes, but sadly their efforts often fail because their organization lacks a systems-based approach to improvement. The past 20 years has taught us that we can't sustain quality improvement without a foundation of a person-centered culture of safety, a holistic framework for continuous improvement that is led by senior leadership, and a model for sustainment that includes effective education and communication.

Course Organization

Course content has been divided into six (6) big topics. There will be assignments associated with the content  of those topics. 

  • The focus of each of the six (6) topics is as follows:
  • Health care Quality
  • Performance Improvement
  • Organizational Performance 
  • Patient Safety
  • Organizational Structures Supporting Quality
  • Population Health

Course Resources

The textbook for this course is a book we’ve used for many years. Because it is an excellent resource, we continue to use it, especially since the newest edition (2018) offers the most up-to-date information on health quality management that cuts across most healthcare settings. The textbook provides additional resources to enhance your learning.

Getting Started Assignments

Getting Started

It’s important as nurse leaders to learn how to communicate. Verbal communication is certainly important, but written communication is the sustainable force when you need to provide a message that requires retaining information. In this course, assignments are geared toward teaching you how to improve your thinking and writing skills.

It is imperative in nursing to systematically examine how the field grows and develops within its boundaries. As future leaders you must be able to map between abstract concepts and clinical practice. The goal is to become more knowledgeable, hone your critical thinking skills, synthesize information, and develop informed views. For every conscientious student or employee, effective writing takes practice, practice, practice.

In addition, I’ve included quizzes in this course. Don’t worry--the quizzes are meant to ensure you have grasped the important information from our text and readings. Other assignments such as discussion board, project and strategic plan assignments further allow you to prove you have grasped the material. 

Be detail-oriented in this course. Don’t rush through it and lose the granularity the course offers. (Granularity refers to the level of detail considered in a model or decision making process. The greater the granularity, the deeper the level of detail.)

Schedule Overview

If you’ve taken online nursing graduate courses at UCF, then you will be familiar with our website and how we move through a semester. I want to talk a bit about deliverables for the course. Summer sessions are generally 12 weeks long, but this course has usually 16 weeks.  Every week, you will need to complete  some activity. What does that mean?  That means you will be graded on something every week. This will likely include quizzes, discussion board,  and/or a presentation assignment.  In this course, unless otherwise notified, all the quizzes are due at 11:59 PM on the Thursday of each class week and the other assignments and deliverables are due at 11:59 PM on the Sunday of each class week. Late assignments mean lost points, and you need to let me know ahead of time if there is an emergent need for a delayed posting.

Great Course

This is a great course. Be methodical, read the material, and re-read if necessary to capture all the information. Each time you read new information, you learn something. If you read it again, what you learned allows you to pick up on even more information.

Let’s Go Knights…