Designing for Sustainment: Keeping Improvement Work on Track (Patient Safety IV) (Coursera)

Designing for Sustainment: Keeping Improvement Work on Track (Patient Safety IV) (Coursera)

Keeping patient safety and quality improvement projects on track, on time, and on budget is critical to ensuring their success. In this course, students will be introduced and given the opportunity to apply a series of tools to guide and manage patient safety and quality initiatives. These include tools for defining what success looks like, developing a change management plan, and conducting a pre-mortem to identify risks for project failure. This course will also provide tools for engaging stakeholders to ensure key players are invested in your project’s success.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

What You Will Learn

  • Recognize the importance of planning for project sustainment.
  • Use the pre-mortem exercise to identify risks of project failure.
  • Design a change management plan that addresses technical and adaptive challenges.
  • Describe the 4E’s + 2 Model and its use to engage stakeholders.

Course 4 of 7 in the Patient Safety Specialization

Syllabus

WEEK 1
What Does Success Look Like?
In this module, learners will develop an understanding of what project sustainment is and why it is important, the potential risks to project sustainment, the importance of planning for sustainment from project inception, types of measures used in quality improvement projects and the attributes of each, how strategies for improvement were developed in two successful large-scale quality improvement initiatives. Learners will become familiar with the issues impacting sustainment and how they may be successfully addressed across the life span of a quality improvement project.

WEEK 2
Conducting a Premortem
In this module, learners will develop an understanding of what the Pre-Mortem exercise is and how it can be used to: improve project planning, surface threats to project success and sustainment, develop interventions to mitigate risk of project failure, create an action plan to maximize the application of Pre-Mortem results, and maintain awareness of threats to project success across the project lifespan. Learners will also develop familiarity with facilitation best-practices. The Pre-Mortem Exercise can be a powerful tool to identify and mitigate risks for project failure.

WEEK 3
Change Management 101
In this module, learners will develop an understanding of: what is meant by change management, reasons for change initiative failure, change as a process, frameworks and processes for change, the differences between technical and adaptive work and the role of each in a change effort, leadership skills necessary for addressing adaptive change, identifying and engaging change effort stakeholders, managing conflict, developing a communication strategy for a change effort, applying a systems approach to change efforts.

WEEK 4
Planning for Engagement Using the 4 E's + 2 Model
In this module, learners will develop an understanding of: the role of engagement in sustainability and spread, addressing barriers to engagement, potential areas of failure in sustaining change effort gains, the 2 E's of embedding and enduring and their role in sustainment, frameworks for sustaining change efforts, a real-world example of successful sustainment of a quality improvement initiative.

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Moving to the Cloud (Coursera) Coursera
University of Melbourne

Moving to the Cloud (Coursera)

The cloud is taking business by storm. In fact, due to the extraordinary growth of the cloud, it has been described as a tornado, not a fluffy white floating object! Commercial research analysts consider cloud as one of the most significant trends with a potential to change the whole global IT industry. Governments, including those in the US, Britain, and Australia, have cloud-first policies now in place which mandate cloud over non-cloud services in ICT procurement.

Sep 28th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Villes africaines: Environnement et enjeux de développement durable (Coursera) Coursera
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Villes africaines: Environnement et enjeux de développement durable (Coursera)

Le cours propose une lecture de l’environnement urbain en Afrique à travers les thématiques les plus pertinentes pour mesurer le niveau de développement d’un pays : eau et vie urbaine, assainissement (eaux usées et pluviales), gestion des déchets solides, agriculture urbaine. Après avoir analysé les différents enjeux de celles-ci, nous aborderons les liens entre environnement urbain et santé.

Sep 21st 2026
5-12 Weeks
On Strategy : What Managers Can Learn from Philosophy - PART 1 (Coursera) Coursera
CentraleSupélec

On Strategy : What Managers Can Learn from Philosophy - PART 1 (Coursera)

In the expression “creative thinking”, the keyword is not creativity; the keyword is thinking. With the help of great philosophers, you will rediscover the art of thinking. To help leaders to be rigorous even without figures, great philosophers have lots of ideas. Managers are invited to rediscover the art of thinking. They should understand the role of mental models, realize the importance of cognitive bias, agree on clear definitions and efficient criteria etc. Creativity demands the ability to unshackle ourselves from conventional ways of thinking, to "think outside the box".

Sep 21st 2026
5-12 Weeks
Synapses, Neurons and Brains (Coursera) Coursera
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Synapses, Neurons and Brains (Coursera)

These are very unique times for brain research. The aperitif for the course will thus highlight the present “brain-excitements” worldwide. You will then become intimately acquainted with the operational principles of neuronal “life-ware” (synapses, neurons and the networks that they form) and consequently, on how neurons behave as computational microchips and how they plastically and constantly change - a process that underlies learning and memory.

Sep 21st 2026
5-12 Weeks
Nutrition and Lifestyle in Pregnancy (Coursera) Coursera
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Nutrition and Lifestyle in Pregnancy (Coursera)

Nutrition and Lifestyle in Pregnancy offers an overview of the latest research findings and international recommendations on a variety of nutrition-related aspects and outcomes of pregnancy. Ensuring a healthy nutritional status and lifestyle prior to and during pregnancy is one of the best ways to help support the healthy growth and development of the unborn child. We will look at how a healthy diet and lifestyle should ideally be achieved prior to conception and provide recommendations for pre-conception counselling of women.

Sep 21st 2026
4 Weeks
Systems Science and Obesity (Coursera) Coursera
Johns Hopkins University

Systems Science and Obesity (Coursera)

Systems science has been instrumental in breaking new scientific ground in diverse fields such as meteorology, engineering and decision analysis. However, it is just beginning to impact public health. This seminar is designed to introduce students to basic tools of theory building and data analysis in systems science and to apply those tools to better understand the obesity epidemic in human populations.

Sep 21st 2026
4 Weeks
Community Change in Public Health (Coursera) Coursera
Johns Hopkins University

Community Change in Public Health (Coursera)

In bringing about behavior change in public health, we often focus on the individual mother, student, or farmer. We should not forget the community structure and norms constrain for encouraging individual health behaviors. This course examines the community context of the changes needed to promote the public’s health. We begin by examining the various definitions of ‘community’ and the processes by which we ‘diagnose’ or seek to understand the structure and characteristics of different types of communities.

Sep 21st 2026
5-12 Weeks