Sessional Lecturer- HAD3030H Concepts and Strategies in Patient Safety
Posted September 22, 2026 • Program: Master of Science Quality Improvement and Patient Safety • Sessional Dates: Winter 2027 (January‑April) • Existing Vacancy: Yes • Course: HAD3030H Concepts and Strategies in Patient Safety
About the role
Efforts to improve patient safety have thus far fallen into two different but, not mutually exclusive categories: 1) a “science safety approach”, drawing on lessons from other high risk industries to develop systems for reporting and learning from safety problems, recognizing the degree to which human errors are often facilitated by latent system problems, attention to human factors design principles affecting everything from equipment use to shift schedules and clinical environments, as well as the importance of teamwork, communication strategies, and organizational culture. 2) “evidence‑based medicine approach”: as with much clinical research, this approach targets common problems (in this case, harms caused by medical care as opposed to diseases), looks for interventions to prevent such complications (e.g., prophylaxis for venous thromboembolism, bundles for preventing central‑line associated infections, bar‑coding to prevent medication administration errors), assesses the evidence supporting these interventions and the degree to which effective implementation strategies also exist.
Beginning with a brief history of patient safety in healthcare, including high profile cases and seminal studies that launched the widespread interest in patient safety, the course will cover key concepts and examples from both of the approaches to studying and reducing patient safety problems. The course will use examples of commonly discussed patient safety practices to convey the state of the evidence supporting the practices as well as key underlying concepts. For instance, the discussion of order sets and computerized decision support will include a review of what is known about their current effectiveness, but also include human factors concepts related to optimal order set design. Similarly,