The Use of Expert Mentoring as an Adjunct to Healthcare Quality Improvement Training

Healthcare organizations are facing ever increasing pressures to improve patient safety, increase efficiency and better satisfy customer needs. The needed changes require that physicians and other clinicians utilize process improvement methodologies and concepts, but most receive little or no exposure to these during their formal education. On-the-job training programs focused solely on delivering the required knowledge are often costly and may not result in the behaviors that drive real improvement. Requiring participants to also complete a quality improvement project and supporting this activity with a qualified mentor can enhance the likelihood that the training investment will result in desired outcomes. The purpose of this article is to describe one organization’s experience with inter-disciplinary quality improvement training that incorporates didactic instruction and formal mentoring by a qualified expert.