The Patient Safety Leadership Academy at the University of Pennsylvania: the first cohort's learning experience.

BACKGROUND: We based the Patient Safety Leadership Academy (PSLA) on the premise that improving management skills could improve patient safety and employee satisfaction. STUDY DESIGN: Fellows completed baseline surveys on leadership skills knowledge, patient safety knowledge, and program goals. They completed the same surveys 7 months later at the final PSLA session. The fellows also completed a survey assessing how PSLA improved expertise and comparing PSLA to other patient safety learning opportunities. Matched pairs t tests were used to compare baseline and postprogram results. RESULTS: Baseline scores indicated appropriateness of focusing on leadership, with average leadership knowledge (2.48) significantly lower than patient safety knowledge (3.22). For patient safety, postprogram results were significant for 8 of 10 questions. All results were significant for leadership. Fellows also rated skills covered by the curriculum on a scale of 1 to 10. For all areas, the median score for knowledge gained was 7. When compared with other patient safety learning experiences, participants rated PSLA as 4 or 5, where 1 indicated the other experience much more valuable and 5 much more valuable. CONCLUSIONS: PSLA demonstrates that leadership skills are perceived as important by physicians and managers in surgical areas. This study demonstrated that a leadership skills approach to patient safety training could improve knowledge in specific leadership areas and general patient safety.