Scottish Improvement Foundation Skills (SIFS) course

The programme is for all colleagues working in health and social care across NHS Highland. We welcome applications outwith the NHS and the course is free for anyone working in a job which supports patient care in any way. The system and network of people who contribute to providing excellent patient care is vast and we want to reach all corners of our system.

Think about the problems you see:

• What are the things about day-to-day work you see that could be better?
• What processes could be changed to improve outcomes for patients?
• Are there ways of working you could adapt to make things easier for staff?

We can help you test these changes and support your learning.

This is a programme of 5 modules delivered in a hybrid learning environment. Each virtual module will last for 2 hours and each face-to-face session will last 3 hours. These face-to-face sessions will be delivered in Inverness for Cohort 7.

There will be 3 progress update sessions in between the taught content. You will be expected to present at 1 of these progress update sessions which will be allocated by the QI Team and we highly recommend you attend all 3 for your enhanced learning experience.

Read flash reports from previous SIFS course cohorts (pdf, October 2024) which demonstrate students' achievements.

Cohort 5 participants have given this feedback:

"The whole programme was hugely beneficial. I will be able to transfer these skills to my everyday practice. I think there was a good mix between face to face sessions and online. I would be keen to progress to another course once I have gained further confidence in applying QI to my role."

"I thoroughly enjoyed the course and it has given me a lot of new knowledge around the QI process. From a complete beginner to being able to go through the processes step by step has enabled me to produce a small QI project which I will continue to develop. I enjoyed all the sessions we completed. It enabled me to focus on specific topics and then go away and develop them for my project which for me is the best way to learn. Time constraints as always is a big factor but I felt the course timings and number of sessions was just right. Jade and Laura are extremely supportive throughout and taught the sessions in a really informative way."