XERCISE 1

Think about the next step in your career. This might be a specific job you are looking for in the field you are studying or a specific healthcare organization for which you aspire to work. Look for a job in your intended field that includes at least one of the strategies described in the section “Common Quality Improvement Strategies”: TQM, MFI, Six Sigma, Lean. Answer the following questions about that job:

What is the title of the position?

What credentials or trainings are listed as “must-haves” in the job description? What are additional “nice-to-haves” or optional skills?

From the job description, can you tell how this role performs on a QI team?

From the job description, can you tell how this role collaborates with colleagues in other disciplines?

Thinking about this job, spend 90 seconds brainstorming on the following three questions:

How would you choose which of the four QI strategies to use in the workplace?

Under what circumstances might you opt for one of the other three or some other strategy instead of the one you chose?

If you were on the job tomorrow, how would you learn more about that strategy to use it at work?

In your previous work and school life, think about a team that you have been a part of. It could be a sports team, a group project for a class, a work team, or another situation in which you collaborated with people to achieve a goal. Answer the following questions:

What are three key features about your team that helped you achieve your goal?

Or, if you did not achieve your goal, what are at least two barriers your team encountered that prevented you from achieving your goal?

What else would you have wanted or needed to help your team achieve its goal, or to make the process of achieving your goal smoother?

If you were to be on the job you chose at the beginning of this exercise tomorrow, how would you bring what you learned from this team experience to that job?