Master of Applied Science in Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality

A fully online, part-time interdisciplinary degree offered by top-ranked schools within Johns Hopkins University.

The Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality master’s program is an interdisciplinary degree offered by the Johns Hopkins University. It is a first of its kind collaboration between the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. It combines coursework from JHU’s top-ranked schools with the Armstrong Institute’s pioneering advances in patient safety. The program is designed to educate students in the transformative mechanisms and evidence-based protocols that reduce preventable patient harm and improve clinical outcomes. View the curriculum.

Advantages of this fully online graduate program:

• Led by renowned experts who are shaping the field through research and application, including one of the world’s leading authorities on patient safety, Dr. Peter Pronovost, Former Director of the Armstrong Institute, and Former Senior Vice President for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine
• Online delivery gives flexibility and accessibility to students around the world
• Adds to your current experience to take your career to the next level
• Competitive price point for tuition

THE PATIENT SAFETY AND HEALTHCARE QUALITY MOVEMENT

Organizations profess patient safety as a top priority, but they are still figuring out how to manage it with the same rigor, discipline and accountability that they do their budgets.

– Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, FCCM

The year 2000 marked the birth of the patient safety movement. Its focus: to end preventable harm and improve patient outcomes and experiences in health care. Since then, there has been groundbreaking work and innovation across the continuum of care. Advances in the science of safety have allowed meaningful discoveries that highlight defective processes. Resulting risk reduction strategies are being implemented, leading to greater efficiency and performance improvement.

This movement has much more to accomplish and great potential to drive further widespread advances in safety and quality. Re-engineering care is rife with complexities. There are hierarchies, limited funding, high patient volumes, time pressures, interruptions, distractions, communication challenges, and siloed data. Making changes can feel like a colossal task. The great news – we CAN effect change. In fact, we are already doing it.

What is the Impact on Public Health

The patient safety problem is staggering. For instance:

• More than one in ten hospitalized people are harmed while receiving care
• One in ten hospitalized patients acquire health care associated infections
• Every American will experience a missed or delayed diagnosis at some point in his or her lifetime
• There are at least 1.5 million preventable adverse drug events in the U.S. every year

WHAT CAN THIS DEGREE DO FOR YOU?

It can turn your passion for patient safety into a career in which you help to lead the charge. The Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality master’s program focuses on the measurement of safety and quality, designing safer systems, organizational and cultural change, patient-centric care and preventing patient harm.

To hear what our alumni have to say about our programs, visit the OPAL landing page.

CAREERS

Interested in patient safety and health care quality careers and what you can do with this degree? Check out the careers page.

Get In Touch

Request more information or call us at 844-379-1319 to speak with an admissions officer.

OPAL Program Office

• Elizabeth Golub, PhD, MEd
  Director, Online Programs for Applied Learning
  Email: egolub@jhu.edu 
  Phone: (410) 502-2502
• Albert Wu, MD
  Director, MAS program in Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality
  Email: awu@jhu.edu  
  Phone: (410) 955-6567

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Students should be aware of additional state-specific information for online programs.

* Total tuition using rates for the 2020-2021 academic year, inclusive of the OPAL Scholarship.