EQUIP Certificate Program Format

EQUIP consists of 6 full days of virtual training over the course of 9 months (July 30-31 & Aug 1, 2024 and May 7-9, 2025).

The program uses a mix of didactic and interactive small group sessions to prepare participants to design and implement a QI project in their local settings.

EQUIP faculty provide distance coaching to participants to support QI project work and help identify common missteps and how to avoid them.

Registration is deliberately capped to maximize the impact of interactive small group learning. This also allows us to maintain a low faculty to participant ratio (1:4), and provide personalized feedback to participants’ QI projects.

Learning Objectives

Participants will develop skills applicable to all aspects of healthcare quality. However, EQUIP places particular emphasis on QI as it relates to optimizing effectiveness, cost and value, patient safety, and more recently, health equity; the program draws on faculty expertise and illustrative examples to pull from these different domains of quality.

Upon completion of EQUIP, participants will be able to:

• Plan and execute an improvement initiative using a quality improvement (QI) framework
• Apply fundamental (e.g., process mapping, Fishbone diagram, Pareto charts) and advanced QI methods (e.g., design thinking, qualitative methods)
• Address organizational context and culture when planning and implementing an improvement initiative
• Develop and refine a QI intervention iteratively through the authentic use of Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles
• Evaluate the impact of a QI intervention using statistical process control
• Demonstrate leadership skills needed to implement a large-scale change in your organization or clinical setting
• Engage others, including interprofessional team members, patients and families, to co-design a QI initiative
• Support and mentor others in their organization to develop local capacity for QI
• Disseminate the results of their QI work through scholarly presentations and publication
• Demonstrate impact through QI to support academic advancement and promotion