National Center for Patient Safety - Patient Safety Improvement Corps

Background:

The Patient Safety Improvement Corps (PSIC) is an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and Veterans Administration (VA) partnership program with the primary goal of improving patient safety by providing the knowledge and skills necessary to:

Conduct effective investigations of reports of medical errors (e.g. close calls, errors with and without patient injury) by identifying their root causes with an emphasis on underlying system causes.
Prepare meaningful reports on the findings.
Develop and implement sustainable system interventions based on report findings.
Measure and evaluate the impact of the safety intervention (i.e., that will mitigate, reduce, or eliminate the opportunity for error and patient injury).
Ensure the sustainability of effective safety interventions by transforming them into standard clinical practice.

Objective:

The Patient Safety Improvement Corps seeks to improve patient safety by providing knowledge and skills to teams of State field staff and hospital partners selected by States.

Target Audience:

State staff in the field (e.g., patient safety officers or those responsible for patient safety reporting and analysis or intervention initiatives) and their hospital counterparts (as selected by the state).

Application Requirements:

Only States may submit applications, but the State applications may include up to two hospital partners as selected by the State (for a total of four participants, maximum per state). If the team is two members, it may be two State staff or one State staff and the State's one selected hospital partner. If the team is three members, two must be from the State and one may be the State's single selected hospital partner. If the team is four members, two must be from the State and two must be the State's selected hospital partners. In no case shall the team consist of less State members than State-selected hospital partner members. Preference will be given to teams of four members.

Costs:

The PSIC program is tuition free. Teams selected to participate will be reimbursed for air fare, lodging, per diem, and local travel costs following the completion of each 1-week session and within approximately 1 month of submission of a complete travel voucher.

When:

Each annual PSIC program consists of three one-week sessions- one week each in September, January, and May. In addition, there will be course related team "homework" during the year (e.g., participation in a Root Cause Analysis and completion of a patient safety project of the team's choice).