Learning components
The new 14-month team-based EXTRA fellowship builds on key curriculum elements that have been successful to date (individual skills and competencies in using research to lead improvement), with a sharper focus on effective techniques, leadership tactics, and organizational strategies to initiate and implement improvement initiatives by teams of interdisciplinary healthcare professionals and policy-makers in leadership positions.
Residency Sessions
The three away-from-home residency sessions are the cornerstone of a comprehensive learning design that includes IT support, mentors, coaches, academic advisors, between-session exercises and work on the intervention project. Each module is delivered by top-flight faculty and practice leaders using a variety of techniques including lectures, case studies and pairs’ exercises. Participants gain a solid grounding in improvement science, but move quickly to applying this learning in practical and relevant ways.
The residency sessions will provide a dynamic forum for interaction, dialogue, and discussions between fellow teams, the EXTRA faculty, the academic mentors and change management coaches who will all be present. During each residency session, teams will participate in activities, led by program faculty, that focus directly on the development of their intervention project. In addition to these activities, on-site evening sessions offered by faculty will provide rich opportunities for consultation.
E-Learning
The new curriculum also incorporates e-learning modules. Between the residency sessions, you will be expected to complete segments of the e-learning curriculum. The objective of the e learning curriculum is to enhance the content learned within the residency sessions through self-directed study and interactions with EXTRA faculty, academic mentors and change management coaches on achieving measured progress on your intervention project.
Intervention Project
During the 14-month fellowship, teams will carry out an “intervention project” (IP) designed to actively engage them and their organization(s) in an improvement initiative rooted in the assessment and application of evidence. The central objective of the intervention project is achieve a quality/performance improvement change in the organization or across jurisdictions and/or sites. It must focus on an area of high priority to the organization(s), and make systematic use of research-based evidence in areas such as policy, program, or administrative issues. EXTRA intervention projects also provide fellows with opportunities to collaborate with other teams in the EXTRA program on similar or comparative projects.