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Service Improvement in Healthcare

Explore how improvement models can help healthcare workers enhance health services and deliver benefits to patients.

1,436 enrolled on this course

  • Duration

    2 weeks
  • Weekly study

    6 hours
This course is part of the program Leadership, Service Improvement and Integrated Care, which is one of the building blocks that leads to a degree in MSc Nursing. Find out more.

Gain insight into healthcare service improvements for both patients and staff

Creating beneficial change requires analysis and research. On this course, you will be introduced to analysis models and service improvement methods that can help create change in the healthcare environment. Some of these methods have been tried and tested by the British National Health Service (NHS).

You will learn how to improve healthcare services at an individual practice level as well as look at the benefit of more extensive improvements for the future. You will identify areas that would benefit from improvements and explore the effect these changes would have on patients and staff.

What topics will you cover?

  • PESTEL analysis
  • SWOT analysis
  • Force Field analysis
  • Root Cause analysis
  • Task Centred leadership
  • Transactional analysis
  • Understanding what we mean by ‘person-centred values’ and patient-centred improvements

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

  • Demonstrate a strong understanding of key theoretical concepts and techniques of leadership and service improvement.
  • Describe approaches to leadership and service improvements that relate to leading and influencing people
  • Explain how your service improvements are person-centred
  • Modify models of leadership, analysis and service improvement to suit a situation

Who is the course for?

This course is for healthcare workers who want to enhance their knowledge in improving private or government-funded health services. It is expected that learners have a healthcare qualification and experience working in multi-disciplinary teams.

Please note that the staff described in the ‘Who will you learn with?’ section below may be subject to change.

Who will you learn with?

A senior nurse specialising in the care of patients with renal and urological disorders. 20 years experience in education, including in South Africa. MSc Nursing Course Director online and on campus.

I am a Senior Lecturer in Adult Nursing at Swansea University. My main background is acute surgery and critical care nursing.
I am an associate lecturer for the MSc at Coventry University.

My professional background is in children's critical care nursing and leadership in the NHS. As an assistant professor at Coventry University I teach on both under graduate and post graduate programs.

Who developed the course?

Coventry University

Coventry secured 5 QS Stars for Teaching and Online Learning in the QS World University Ranking 2020 and has received No. 1 in the world for Massive Open Online Courses in MoocLab’s World University Ranking 2021.

  • Established

    1992
  • Location

    Coventry

Learning on FutureLearn

Your learning, your rules

  • Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
  • Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
  • Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores

Join a global classroom

  • Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
  • Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
  • Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others

Map your progress

  • As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
  • Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control
  • Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate

Want to know more about learning on FutureLearn? Using FutureLearn

Advance your career with a degree

Since 2017 you have been able to take a degree on FutureLearn. This free course is a bit like a starter course for a degree — it should give you a flavour of the degree subject but can also be your first step towards a degree qualification.

If you enjoy this course you can apply to join the program it’s part of to start working towards a degree on FutureLearn.

Don’t worry, you can still take the course without doing a full degree!

Do the free course
Join and complete the program
Get academic credit for an online degree from Coventry University
This course is part of the program Leadership, Service Improvement and Integrated Care, which is one of the building blocks that leads to a degree in MSc Nursing.

This program will help you study a range of models so that you can put into practice contemporary thinking about leadership, service improvement, analysis and project management for real improvements.

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