Teaching a Systems Approach: An Innovative Quality Improvement Project.

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Healthcare Systems
• Quality Improvement Science

Background:

• Nurse practitioners (NPs) must navigate complex healthcare systems.
• Quality improvement (QI) projects offer opportunities for NP students to gain systems knowledge and enhance patient care.
• A literature gap exists in systematically teaching, applying, and measuring QI objectives at the master's level.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically teach, apply, and measure QI curricular objectives for psychiatric NP master's students.
• To enhance NP students' acquisition of QI skills through revised curricula.
• To address the gap in the literature regarding QI education in NP programs.

Main Methods:

• Six faculty members evaluated the QI project within a psychiatric NP master's program.
• Faculty identified challenging QI concepts for students.
• Teaching strategies were revised to address identified gaps, and outcomes were retrospectively evaluated by comparing student performance before and after curriculum changes.

Main Results:

• A statistically significant difference in QI project performance was observed between the 2014 and 2015 graduating classes.
• Performance was measured by scores on students' final papers (t[92] = 1.66, p = .05).
• The effect size indicated a small but significant improvement in student outcomes post-curriculum revision.

Conclusions:

• Theoretical principles of adult and cooperative learning informed the curriculum modifications.
• The revised curriculum successfully enhanced students' acquisition of QI skills.
• The study provides a model for systematically teaching QI in master's-level NP programs.