Team-based healthcare is provided by two or more people who represent different professions with the common goal of improving the well-being of a patient. Interprofessional (IP) collaboration may improve outcomes such as pain relief, improved access to healthcare services, and early recognition of treatment failure. Effective team-based, patient-centered care should be tailored to the population served and the needs of those individuals. This course outlines the components of team-based care and provides examples in different settings.

This course aims to help healthcare team members identify core principles of team-based IP healthcare in all settings.

Human trafficking victims are often concealed by their traffickers; however, studies show that many victims interact with healthcare professionals while they are being victimized. This places healthcare professionals in a unique position to recognize the signs and risk factors of human trafficking and take steps if they suspect a person may be a victim of human trafficking.

The goal of this course is to provide healthcare staff with critical steps to recognize and respond to human trafficking.

Nurses deliver infusion therapy to millions of patients in hospitals, home healthcare settings, long-term care facilities, outpatient clinics, and physicians’ offices annually. Nursing professionals perform many daily activities involving peripheral catheter insertion and safe delivery of intravenous (IV) fluids and medications. The use of vascular access devices and IV therapy are commonplace in the acute care setting. With that said, clinicians must take caution due to the potentially serious and fatal complications that can occur from inappropriate IV fluid or drug delivery. Patient safety requires that nurses institute safeguards to avoid complications associated with IV treatment.

Every year, workers are injured or killed when the equipment they are working with unexpectedly turns on or the residual energy stored in the equipment is released. Lockout/Tagout, or LOTO, is a set of procedures used to control hazardous energy during the service or maintenance of machine and equipment. The aim of LOTO procedures is to protect workers from the release of hazardous energy.  

The goal of this course is to provide all staff with an overview of lockout/tagout procedures.

This course equips nurses, providers, and pharmacists with essential knowledge to identify and manage sepsis using the latest evidence-based guidelines, including screening tools and the 1-hour sepsis bundle. Participants will learn about sepsis pathophysiology, diagnostic strategies, and treatment protocols while emphasizing interprofessional collaboration. The course also highlights prevention, patient-centered care, and strategies to improve outcomes in this life-threatening condition.

Almost 95% of all maternal mortalities happen in low and lower middle-income countries (World Health Organization, 2023). However, the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among all developed countries. Approximately 700 patients die each year in the U.S. due to pregnancy complications and nearly 85% of those deaths are preventable (Hill et al., 2022). Furthermore, the AMA and CDC state that Black and AIAN patients are 3 to 5 times more likely to die from maternal complications than White patients (AMA, 2023). Indigenous, immigrant, refugee, and low-income populations are also at significantly greater risk of poorer maternal outcomes. However, in the past few years, global and national advocacy initiatives have set their philanthropic and financial radar on improving maternal outcomes in these vulnerable communities.

Medication errors and substandard care occur often in today’s complex healthcare organizations. High-reliability organizations remain alert to potential errors and ways in which they can be prevented, regardless of how few adverse events occur. Healthcare organizations with a culture for patient safety focus on identifying the cause of errors and applicable prevention strategies rather than blaming or punishing the people involved in an error. Organizations that focus on patient safety in this manner have higher rates of error reporting and are better positioned to address problems at the systems level.

The goal of this course is to educate healthcare professionals about approaches to prevent medication errors.

This course is designed to enhance the skills of healthcare professionals in conducting effective medication reconciliation with the aim of avoiding medication errors. Learners will explore core concepts of medication reconciliation, review common sources of medication reconciliation discrepancies, and learn practical strategies to minimize errors in the medication reconciliation process.

This course is about workplace slip, trip, and fall hazards. It alerts you to the serious consequences that can result even from a simple fall or a near fall and provides information about measures that can help you prevent these incidents and reduce potential injuries.

Earthquakes and tsunamis unleash powerful forces of nature. They cause catastrophic infrastructure and property damage and can result in tremendous loss of life. This course presents some basic facts about earthquakes and tsunamis, including considerations for preparedness and protective actions.

Floods and landslides can occur in many locations throughout the U.S. This course provides basic information about these hazards and the destruction they can cause. This course emphasizes the importance of being informed about flooding and landslide risks and hazards around you and various protective actions you could consider taking.

The goal of this course is to provide employees with a foundation for staying safe during flooding and landslides.

Many patients do not understand information that healthcare providers give them. Inadequate health literacy can put patients’ lives at risk, and it is a major driver of healthcare costs due to preventable complications. Health literacy is not limited to the ability to read letters and numbers. It requires integration of many skills, including reading, listening, analytical and decision-making abilities, and the proficiency to apply these skills to health situations. This course provides information to help nurses present information in a manner that helps their patients understand vital healthcare instructions. 

This course is intended to give healthcare providers the information necessary to identify the relationship between patient-centered care and patient safety as well as to understand the key concepts of patient-centered care and systems that improve patient safety to enhance patient outcomes.

Perioperative professionals must have a fundamental understanding of the anatomical, physiological, psychological, and emotional differences of children compared to adults and how these differences impact the care needs of pediatric patients in the perioperative period.

In the operating room, patient safety depends on high quality communication and shared knowledge among the surgical team. Several factors in this setting can contribute to communication failures like time constraints, shift changes, environmental barriers, the complex nature of surgical procedures, and clashing communication styles. All members of the surgical team must understand the risks to patient safety associated with communication failures, what information must be communicated and when, and how to use an assertive communication style.

The goal of this course is to equip nurses and CSTs with best practices for effectively communicating in the operating room. 

Medical errors and substandard care occur often in today’s complex healthcare organizations. Errors are usually due to multiple factors at the system-level rather than a single factor from an individual. Healthcare organizations that are committed to patient safety are high-reliability organizations. These organizations remain alert for ways to protect patients from harm even though they have few adverse events. This course will offer suggestions for reducing medical errors and maintaining a culture of safety.

The prevalence of medical errors correlates with increased risk of patient harm in the healthcare setting. Since most errors are related to systems issues/failures and not to inadequate care by providers, it is critical to understand the breadth of the problem and the best ways to prevent adverse events and medical errors to improve patient safety. 

Ensuring patient safety in the operating room (OR) requires effective communication, structured protocols, and teamwork. This course examines perioperative communication failures, preoperative verification, site marking, timeouts, and just culture in promoting accountability. Learners will explore evidence-based safety practices and apply structured handoff techniques to improve patient care transitions.

This course provides perioperative nurses and STs with tools to improve communication and safety protocols, fostering a just culture to reduce OR errors.

Survivors of rape and sexual assault will experience a variety of physical and emotional comorbidities as a direct result of their experience. This means survivors will enter the healthcare system through a variety of specialty clinics in addition to their primary care provider. It is important healthcare providers of all disciplines, be familiar with the signs that a patient may have been raped or sexually assaulted in their past. This course will provide the legal aspects of rape and sexual assault, the emotional and physical trauma associated with the experience, and how to identify and care for survivors. 

A review of clinical judgment related to the use of primary maneuvers for managing shoulder dystocia.

Health outcomes are influenced in myriad ways by an individual’s social environment and their community. For example, community is linked to such outcomes as body mass index, homicide rates, and suicidal behavior (Diez Roux & Mair, 2010; Bharmal et al., 2015; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], n.d.). Due to these strong influences on health outcomes, the U.S. Department Health and Human Services Healthy People 2030 campaign identifies social and community context as a domain of the social determinants of health. Social determinants of health are external conditions which exist with the potential to affect a patient’s current and future health, often beyond a patient’s direct control. Of particular importance, however, is how this domain fits into the larger picture of the social determinants of health. The elements in the social and community context have been shown to help negate potentially negative consequences of the other social determinants of health (Bharmal et al., 2015).

Nearly 10% of U.S. population does not have health insurance (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion [ODPHP], n.d.a). Healthy People 2030 is a national population and public health initiative endorsed by top U.S. government health agencies, setting health goals for the U.S. healthcare system to improve the overall wellbeing of patients in their communities. This course provides an in-depth and interactive analysis of one of the five Healthy People 2030’s domains of social determinants of health (SDOH), healthcare access and quality, and its impact on patient outcomes.