merrion street

The Minister for Health Dr. James Reilly T.D. announced today (22nd March, 2012) that the first Diploma in Leadership and Quality in Healthcare Programme will be rolled out to ensure that all health service leaders will participate in this critical training initiative. The eight month programme, used to train current health service leaders in techniques to drive the quality of our health services, began in October 2011 and will be repeated as funding will be provided by the Special Delivery Unit of the Department of Health.

For the last six months the quality and patient safety directorate in the HSE under the leadership of Dr Philip Crowley in partnership with the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland has been running this diploma programme. The programme has been led by Dr David Vaughan who has brought in leading international thinkers on health service quality improvement to deliver a world class educational programme. "For a long time, we have complained that health management didn't get the training required. With the funding I am committing today we will be able to build significantly on this initiative and ensure all our health leaders develop this important expertise and will give them the necessary tools and skills needed" stated Minister Reilly.

Minister Reilly further commented "this announcement today represents a further commitment to quality improvement and builds on the work of the clinical programmes in driving up quality. It is part of a wider set of initiatives that are improving patient safety that include HSE work on national surgical and ICU audit developed with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the work to improve care through HIQA standards, HSE work on managing adverse events and its work to involve patients in health decisions that affect them"

Further details of the programme currently underway are available at http://www.rcpi.ie/News/Pages/DiplomainLeadershipandQualityinHealthcare.aspx