The identification of best practices in teaching quality competencies for preparing future health care leaders

The mandate for quality in all aspects of clinical practice, service delivery, and management practice has never been greater. The Institute of Medicine's (IOM) landmark work To Err is Human heightened the urgency of this serious issue. In a follow-up report, the IOM's Crossing the Quality Chasm called for radical change to achieve numerous quality objectives throughout the continuum of the healthcare system including the preparation of future healthcare leaders. This study was conducted to assess how effectively healthcare management education faculty are meeting the challenge of integrating quality improvement into their curricula and how faculty perceived their quality expertise. Another goal was to identify the student learning assessment strategies, teaching methods, content, and resources utilized by faculty to achieve this integration and to suggest a framework for "best practices" in teaching quality competencies citing the literature. The study's findings raise a number of important issues with respect to the ways in which QI is conceptualized and integrated into curricula and concludes that there is substantial need for 'quality improvement' in healthcare management education faculty's approaches to the teaching of QI.