The call for expressions of interest for the Fall 2025 QI Qualified Collaborative is open! Submissions can be made via the QI Collaborative Expression of Interest E-Form by Friday, July 11, 2025.
The Quality Improvement & Safety team has designed this QI collaborative to meet the needs of staff, physicians, leaders, and patient family advisors who are (or will be) leading quality improvement initiatives.
We understand that our people are our most important asset, and that your time is precious. We also know that this set of knowledge and tools will give you what you need to be successful to:
- Identify problems using evidence.
- Set achievable and measurable improvement targets (aka aims).
- Test changes using plan-do-study-act cycles with sensible implementation/change management plans, with a lens of behavior change.
- Share results using easy to understand run-charts.
- Integrate improvements into practice and sustain the gains over time.
- Share lessons learned and insights so others can improve care and outcomes across NS Health.
How the collaborative works
Over the seven months of the collaborative, participants will:
- Join seven, 1.5 to 2-hour virtual learning sessions.
- Work collaboratively with a small local team to design, implement and evaluate an evidence-informed QI initiative that addresses a pressing clinical, site/service or unit focused priority or challenge.
- Have access to bi-weekly improvement coaching by experienced quality improvement safety leaders who provide advice, guidance and support.
- Benefit from peer-to-peer support among participants.
- Teams are expected to submit their final storyboard to their local Quality Improvement Summit to assess readiness for spread.
Who should participate?
- Any Nova Scotia Health staff, leader, physician and patient family advisor who is eligible to participate.
- Priority will be given to those who hold responsibility for quality improvement, including directors, health services managers and embedded zone quality leaders.
Requirements
Participants must have:
- Attended a Mandatory Pre-Application Webinar (see overview).
- Director/manager/department head approval to participate.
- Time dedicated to attend all learning sessions (15 hours), improvement coaching (15 hours), and adequate time to lead the QI initiative (~1-2 hours / week = 30-60 hours), for a total of 60-90 hours over the collaborative.
- An identified priority / challenge on which to focus the QI initiative.
- This work must be a quality improvement initiative under the oversight of a Nova Scotia Health quality improvement and safety council / team structure to ensure it is protected under the Nova Scotia Quality-improvement Information Protection Act.
Completion Criteria
To ensure that participants are QI Qualified, participants must:
- attend all learning sessions.
- participate in coaching sessions.
- develop and present a storyboard to be shared on the QI Hub and presented to the QIS Council/Team providing oversight.
Upon confirmation of these requirements, participants will receive a pin and certificate of completion signed by NS Health Senior Director and Senior Medical Director Quality Improvement and Safety.
Selection
- The collaborative has limited space. Please complete 1 submission per team, with primary participant serving as the QI team lead – this is to ensure adequate availability of improvement coaching support.
- Note: additional team members for accepted teams are welcome to participate in the learning sessions.
- Selection criteria
- Readiness as demonstrated by manager / director approval/support and a clear articulation of the QI initiative (sense of the underlying problem and possible solutions)
- Representation by zone, site, services, and QI focus
- Representative of target audience: priority will be given to those who hold responsibility for quality improvement, including directors, health services managers, and embedded zone quality leaders
- Alignment with Nova Scotia’s Action for Health and Nova Scotia Health's True North priorities
- If the above requirements are met (demonstrates readiness), participants will be accepted based on capacity, as well as to ensure representation across zones and services/programs.
Please note: A true QI initiative is inherently different than that of a Clinical/Service Quality Project (CIPs). CIPs involve work that aims to improve clinical care/environments and service delivery but does not involve testing of change ideas through use of quality improvement methodologies (PDSA cycles, continuous measurement, etc.) This work could include, but is not limited to, retrospective chart reviews to inform best practice and/or current states, program evaluation activities etc.
If there is more interest than can be accommodated in this collaborative, they will be offered regularly going forward and you can reapply to the next collaborative.
