Improving the Quality of Health Care Services in Resource Poor Settings

Kliniken &… Institute Heidelberger Institut… Teaching Short Courses Short Courses in… Improving the Quality…
  • Tuition Fees: General Admission €1,500, tropEd €1,000
  • 2-week course equals 90 hours of student investment time (35 hours of lectures, 30 hours of facilitated group work and 25 hours self-directed learning), TropEd students can earn 3 ECTS points
  • Open to: tropEd students, public health professionals and other health professionals

Entry Requirements

This Short Course is held in English. Course participants should have excellent command/high level of proficiency in reading, writing and speaking English.

Content Overview

This course focuses on practical tools and methods to improve healthcare services in low- and middle-inco-me countries. It introduces participants to major steps and trends in healthcare quality and patient safety movements with a focus on challenges to improving quality in resource-limited settings. Course participants learn how to adapt quality impro-vement tools, methods, and techniques to national and local settings with a special emphasis on mana-ging and motivating people and designing sustainable health improvement programmes. A two-day skills development workshop strengthens individual and team skills in evaluating the quality of health care services.

Course Topics

  • Prioritizing quality improvement: rationale, methods and examples
  • Overview of quality and safety terminology and concepts
  • Harmonizing quality improvement with local and international health system strengthening initiatives
  • Developing and implementing standards, guidelines and indicators in a healthcare service
  • Designing and implementing quality assessments using audit, accreditation and supervision
  • Personal skills development for managing teams in improving quality
  • Designing and managing quality improvement teams including quality circles, clinical guideline working groups, clinical audit, and quality improvement committees
  • Quality improvement tools such as checklists, affinity analysis, flow chart, mind mapping, fish-bone diagram, force-field analysis, prioritisation matrix, Gantt chart, control chart, and radar chart
  • Case studies of quality improvement in low and middle-income countries

Learning Objectives

By the end of the module the participants should be able to:

  • Defend the importance of improving quality in health services
  • Describe common mechanisms to improve quality of health services in resource limited settings
  • Critically analyze the use of quality improvement principles and mechanisms in resource limited settings
  • Describe current human and other resource challenges to improve health service quality Demonstrate individual and team skills in using quality improvement tools and mechanisms

Schedule & Certification

Most of the short courses require full-time attendance from Mondays to Fridays, 9am - 5 pm. Of Fridays courses generally finish around noon If not stated otherwise, all classes and activities will also run on public holidays.

Students and course participants must attend full-time and successtully complete all the assessment components in order to receive a certificate of attendance or a grade report from Heidelberg University. tropEd students will be able to credit short courses towards the Master's programme at their home institution.

Course Fee

  • General Admittance: € 1.500.-
  • tropEd students: € 1.000.-

Included in the course fee is a non-refundable registration fee of € 200.-
Please register as soon as possible as the number of participants is limited.
Unfortunately, no Scholarships are available.
If the participant withdraws from the course

  • less than 6 weeks prior: 25 % of the course fee will be charged.
  • less than 4 weeks prior: 50 % of the course fee will be charged.
  • less than 2 weeks prior: the whole course fee will be charged.

The tuition fee does not include accommodation, insurance or other personal living costs during the stay.