Enhance your nursing or healthcare career with Southern New Hampshire University's Healthcare Quality and Safety Post-Graduate Certificate. This 12-credit program follows strategies for improving healthcare safety and quality, as aligned with today's industry standards. Students will identify ways to ensure the continuous improvement of the patient care process. You'll specifically focus on healthcare quality improvement, risk assessment, communication, legal issues, and strategies that contribute to building a culture of safety.

You'll also explore ways to ensure accountability and reliability in care processes and collaborate with multidisciplinary teams. In the online patient safety and quality post-graduate healthcare certificate, you'll learn how to:

- Propose informatics technologies that help deliver and enhance patient care

- Apply research practices to drive real-world improvement in healthcare

- Use data to ensure excellence in healthcare across diverse settings

- Develop continuous improvement of the patient care process

In the online post-graduate healthcare quality and safety certificate, you'll explore healthcare systems and processes that contribute to risk reduction, evidence-based practice, knowledge of the healthcare environment, leadership, accountability, professionalism, and business skills.

According to Debra Sowell, clinical faculty of graduate nursing programs at SNHU, the healthcare quality and safety courses "focus on healthcare policies, regulation, economics, and high-reliability healthcare that is consistently excellent and safe overall services and settings for long periods of time."

"As you progress through the content, you'll "apply best practices [and] evaluate system efficiencies, promote a culture of safety and identify resources needed for healthcare quality improvements," she said. Building upon your technical aptitude, you'll gain a deep understanding of how cross-organizational teams work together within a complex healthcare system. "

"The demands of patient and safety roles require interdisciplinary collaboration," Dr. Karen Brooks, graduate nursing faculty lead at SNHU. "This is why the four courses in this certificate program are interdisciplinary health professions (IHP) courses."

Delivery of care depends on an interdisciplinary approach and culture of safety across teams composed of providers, pharmacists, and other skilled medical workers. Every touchpoint requires a set of processes built to ensure the safety of patients. Whether it's throughout the patient's admission process or the multi-step process of administering medication to a patient, these practices are essential in reducing harm and risk. Beyond that, the cost is a major driver of quality care.

"The four interdisciplinary courses that comprise the certificate program are tailored to address the undeniable nexus between quality and cost," Brooks said. "This is through courses that focus on organizational strategies to improve and highlight quality while also considering value and cost containment aspects."

One such course is Healthcare Quality and Improvement. This interprofessional course will take learners through the process of healthcare delivery from a quality and safety lens. Learners can gain a deeper understanding of how quality is measured, tracked, and improved in healthcare. Learners will focus on organizational assessments, commonly used tools, and the application of analytical frameworks to identify the root cause of an event and will gain knowledge of healthcare data relevance, use of change management principles and tools, and evaluation methods. Healthcare Safety, Just Culture, and Regulation, on the other hand, allows learners to explore the impact of regulatory and accreditation standards on organizational compliance and liability. Topics include accreditation and regulatory standards, compliance, and advocating for a culture of safety. Learners can lead change by developing person-centered solutions that mitigate risks and promote quality and safety.

(Open to qualified nursing and health professions candidates only.) Nurse applicants who wish to pursue this certificate must meet MSN degree program admission requirements AND have earned a master's degree from an accredited nursing program (ACEN, CCNE, and CNEA) with a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0. Non-nursing health professionals who wish to pursue this certificate must have earned a health professions master's degree from an accredited institution with a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0.

$150 Graduation Fee, Course Materials ($ varies by course)