SusQI is best learnt through considering practical examples, and helping learners to apply tools and principles to develop their own project ideas.

 

You may be in a position to offer to supervise a project within your institution, and the resources within this toolkit hopefully will make this a straightforward and rewarding experience. Even if your students have limited QI teaching time, applying SusQI methods can add value to that learning process.

 

The first step is to familiarising yourself with the SusQI Project Resources. Once more familiar with the tools of SusQI, you may want to explore how it fits into existing QI curriculum outcomes and other broader learning objectives- ie those of the GMC or NMC.

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You will also find some template teaching sessions, templates for project design/reporting and suggested assessment criteria, which you are welcome to adapt for your own use.

 

To help introduce your learners (or other stakeholders) to the underlying concepts, Dr Frances Mortimer has produced an excellent slide presentation summarising the SusQI concepts, which you are free to download and adapt for your own use (although we ask that you please acknowledge The Centre of Sustainable Healthcare). Or you may like to watch Dr Frances Mortimer's webinar on Sustainable Quality Improvement to understand how the principles of SusQI can be taught.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SusQI learning should be enjoyable and empowering! We have found that learners appreciate the chance to choose their own project focus and develop their own change ideas; however, they also like structure and support. You can help with this by scoping out a menu of suitable topic areas / clinical settings for them to choose from and by arranging for supportive project supervisors.

 

Make sure that expectations are realistic - they may not be able to see through a full improvement cycle if they only have a few weeks, but can still practise applying some of the SusQI methods and discuss how impacts could be measured over a longer time.

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We aim for SusQI to become a mainstream part of all QI teaching and students can share their QI projects in any QI journal or conference. However, students may want to share their projects in places with a particular focus on environmental sustainability and here are some places to do so:

 

• Health Services Journal Environmental and Sustainability award 

• Brighton SHARE Conference 

• BMJ Environmental Sustainability and Climate Action Team of the Year

• Greener Practice website  

                 

Remember, when teaching SusQI, the learning is more important than the success of individual projects. We all know that many QI projects are not successful but through applying a SusQI approach we hope that learners will have a positive experience and be inspired to continue improving care throughout their careers.

 

We would love to hear about your experiences of teaching SusQI and you may want to post them on our clinical or education sustainability networks or consider sharing them at a international medical education conference such as AMEE.