Education and Training as Improvement Interventions

Delivering safe, high-quality care needs a competent and capable workforce, particularly as clinical practices change with scientific and technical advances. Structured learning opportunities are a central approach to building and maintaining competencies, but ineffective training wastes the scarce resources and staff time. This Element provides a review of education and training design, implementation, and evaluation methods used in healthcare improvement. Drawing from the general learning sciences and healthcare education and training literatures, the authors describe five pillars of effective training. For each pillar, they provide actionable guidance based on the best available evidence. Three examples of quality and safety programmes are given to illustrate the positive impact of well-designed training, and the challenges of good training design in healthcare improvement. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.