“Attending the Understanding and Reducing Variation in Healthcare course made me realise that measurement was fundamental.”

Jane Montague is a Lecturer in Health Studies who teaches undergraduates on Nursing, Public Health and Wellbeing courses. She is currently responsible for a 3rd year module entitled ‘Contemporary issues in Health, Wellbeing and Social Care’ which covers health policy, including service improvement.

Prior to attending the course, Jane was unaware of the direct relevance to her module of the material on variation and so had not included it. Jane realised however, as a result of attending this course, that understanding variation was fundamental. This was reinforced by observing the reaction of the multi-disciplinary participants on the course: medics, service improvers, data analysts and other health professionals. All were fully responsive and engaged so well: ‘you could feel it in the room’.

Jane was part-way through teaching the above module when she attended the ‘Understanding and Reducing Variation in Healthcare’ course in October 2018. Jane quickly adapted her teaching to include much of the ‘Understanding variation’ material into the taught module. The students really responded well and found it useful.

When the module is repeated this coming Autumn Jane intends to fully incorporate the material from the outset. She suspects that anyone involved in health care and policy responds well to the material and it is meaningful to them.

Jane attended the Improvement Academy Understanding and Reducing Variation in Healthcare event, funded through the Yorkshire and Humber AHSN on 17th October 2018.