The EMS quality manager usually has responsibility for clinical processes – in collaboration with the EMS medical director. But what about quality issues in other parts of the EMS organization? In this episode, we talk about how can the EMS quality manager can have a broader impact. Duration: 3 minutes, 12 seconds
Career Goals and CME – Quality Over Coffee Series
Continuing education programs for EMS professionals should actually continue their professional development – not just maintain it. This episode considers the idea of designing an EMS CME program that helps your clinicians make progress towards their long term career goals and pursue their specific interests in EMS. Duration: 3 minutes, 9 seconds
CME Prescriptions – Quality Over Coffee Series
Working EMS professionals can have vastly different clinical experiences and call volumes. Is a one-size-fits-all approach the best way to organize their continuing medical education programs? This episode explores the improvement opportunity idea of creating a prescription for each clinician based on a personal needs assessment. Duration: 2 minutes, 58 seconds
Improvement Hypothesis – Quality Over Coffee Series
EMS quality managers usually don’t see themselves as scientists, but when they implement a well designed improvement project, they ARE using the scientific method. This segment describes the parallels between the design of EMS quality improvement projects and the design of scientific research projects. Duration: 3 minutes, 18 seconds
Acronyms for Quality – Quality Over Coffee Series
There’s a lot of acronyms used in quality management. Knowing what those acronyms stand for and the what their specific meanings are is not always obvious. Some of them are very similar to each other, so knowing these differences between them is also important. Some of the more common acronyms used in describing overall quality… Read More
Baselines – Quality Over Coffee Series
Baselines are used to show how well a process is performing at or before the start of a quality improvement project. This segment provides a very basic explanation of what baselines are and how to use them when planning and implementing an emergency medical services quality improvement project. The example used in this segment is… Read More
Benchmarking in EMS – Quality Over Coffee Series
Benchmarking provides a way to make useful comparisons between your performance and the performance of other in EMS or other industries with similar processes. Benchmarks in emergency medical services can also provide a reference for setting performance goals. This segment provides a high level description of benchmarks in emergency medical services use baselines when planning… Read More
Quality Police – Quality Over Coffee Series
The quality departments of many EMS organizations have less than desirable reputations with the field staff. Why is this? Explore the reasons and get some ideas on how to fix that reputation by embracing a different philosophy about how to manage quality in EMS. Duration: 5 min 4 sec
