- Patient Care
- Patient Safety
- Comprehensive Unit-Based Safety Program (Cusp) Toolkit
- Quality Improvement
- Systems Thinking
- Communication
- Healthcare Leadership
- Organizational Culture
- Project Management
- Design Thinking
- Change Management
- Project Planning
Patient Safety Specialization
Become a Leader in Patient Safety. Master the strategies and tools to implement effective patient safety and quality initiatives.
Offered By
What you will learn
Identify the core aspects of a strong patient safety culture.
Describe the attributes of systems and processes that support a strong patient safety culture and a culture of continuous learning.
Analyze safety and quality measures to identify areas for improvement as well as to monitor and sustain improvement projects.
Develop a patient safety or quality improvement strategic plan.
Skills you will gain
About this Specialization
Applied Learning Project
Learners will use real-world strategies, tools, and techniques to resolve various patient safety and quality issues based on authentic scenarios that occur in medical and clinical settings. They will also be required to leverage cross-disciplinary concepts to successfully address patient safety concerns.
Health care professionals interested in acquiring concepts, strategies and skills needed to lead patient safety and quality improvement projects.
Health care professionals interested in acquiring concepts, strategies and skills needed to lead patient safety and quality improvement projects.
How the Specialization Works
Take Courses
A Coursera Specialization is a series of courses that helps you master a skill. To begin, enroll in the Specialization directly, or review its courses and choose the one you'd like to start with. When you subscribe to a course that is part of a Specialization, you’re automatically subscribed to the full Specialization. It’s okay to complete just one course — you can pause your learning or end your subscription at any time. Visit your learner dashboard to track your course enrollments and your progress.
Hands-on Project
Every Specialization includes a hands-on project. You'll need to successfully finish the project(s) to complete the Specialization and earn your certificate. If the Specialization includes a separate course for the hands-on project, you'll need to finish each of the other courses before you can start it.
Earn a Certificate
When you finish every course and complete the hands-on project, you'll earn a Certificate that you can share with prospective employers and your professional network.

There are 7 Courses in this Specialization
Patient Safety and Quality Improvement: Developing a Systems View (Patient Safety I)
In this course, you will be able develop a systems view for patient safety and quality improvement in healthcare. By then end of this course, you will be able to: 1) Describe a minimum of four key events in the history of patient safety and quality improvement, 2) define the key characteristics of high reliability organizations, and 3) explain the benefits of having strategies for both proactive and reactive systems thinking.
Setting the Stage for Success: An Eye on Safety Culture and Teamwork (Patient Safety II)
Safety culture is a facet of organizational culture that captures attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and values about safety. A culture of safety is essential in high reliability organizations and is a critical mechanism for the delivery of safe and high-quality care. It requires a strong commitment from leadership and staff. In this course, a safe culture is promoted through the use of identifying and reporting patient safety hazards, accountability and transparency, involvement with patients and families, and effective teamwork.
Planning a Patient Safety or Quality Improvement Project (Patient Safety III)
This course provides students with a set of tools and methodologies to plan and initiate a Problem Solving or Quality Improvement project. The first module presents methods for selecting, scoping and structuring a project before it is even initiated. It also introduces the project classifications of implementation and discovery. The second module describes the A3 problem solving methodology and the tool itself. Further in that same module, the student is shown tools to identify problems in flow, defects, and waste and to discover causes, brainstorm, and prioritize interventions. Module 3 shows a methodology within the implementation class. These methods are designed to overcome emotional and organizational barriers to translating evidence-based interventions into practice. The fourth and last module looks at one more way to approach improvement projects in the discovery class. These tools are specifically for new, out-of-the-box design thinking.
Designing for Sustainment: Keeping Improvement Work on Track (Patient Safety IV)
Keeping patient safety and quality improvement projects on track, on time, and on budget is critical to ensuring their success. In this course, students will be introduced and given the opportunity to apply a series of tools to guide and manage patient safety and quality initiatives. These include tools for defining what success looks like, developing a change management plan, and conducting a pre-mortem to identify risks for project failure. This course will also provide tools for engaging stakeholders to ensure key players are invested in your project’s success.
Offered by

Johns Hopkins University
The mission of The Johns Hopkins University is to educate its students and cultivate their capacity for life-long learning, to foster independent and original research, and to bring the benefits of discovery to the world.
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