Healthcare Systems Resilience: Analysing Failure, Driving Change, and Sustaining Improvement
This masters level short course examines healthcare organisations as complex adaptive systems in which outcomes arise from dynamic interactions among people, technologies, processes, and environments. Over three structured days, the course develops advanced analytical, design, and evaluative competencies relevant to safety, quality improvement, and organisational learning.
New pilot short course
Initially pilot courses are only open to a limited number of University of Bristol staff and postgraduate research students, who provide detailed feedback in exchange for early access to the course. Find out more about pilot courses
| Dates | 28-30 April 2027 |
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| Fee | £0 |
| Format | Online |
| Audience | Open to a limited number of University of Bristol staff and postgraduate research students only (prerequisites apply). |
| Organisers | Dr David Grant and Dr Anna Hurley-Wallace |
Course profile
This course aims to teach graduates how to conduct rigorous systems analyses, translate findings into practical interventions, and contribute meaningfully to the advancement of resilient practice.
Please click on the sections below for more information:
This course will be delivered online and synchronously over 3 consecutive days through a mixture of lectures, flipped classrooms, case study discussions and group work.
By the end of the course participants should be able to:
- critically analyse determinants of system performance in systems viewed as complex adaptive systems;
- evaluate and compare contemporary safety and accident models and their application to practice;
- apply systems-based analytical methods to investigate complex organisational challenges;
- select and justify appropriate complexity-informed frameworks for problem analysis and intervention design;
- assess organisational resilience and adaptive capacity in relation to safety and quality outcomes;
- design and justify contextually appropriate change and improvement interventions; and
- evaluate unintended consequences of system change and revise improvement strategies accordingly to sustain meaningful change.
The content of this course is applicable to any staff member and postgraduate students. It will strengthen their ability to understand, influence, and improve complex systems. This three-day course equips professionals with modern systems thinking tools to analyse problems, design effective change, and evaluate impact. Through applied frameworks and real-world case work, participants learn how to build sustainable, resilient improvements in safety, quality, and organisational performance.
This masters level short course examines healthcare organisations as complex adaptive systems in which outcomes arise from dynamic interactions among people, technologies, processes, and environments.
Day one focuses on problem identification, introducing systems thinking, human factors, and resilience engineering frameworks to move beyond linear causal models toward richer system level interpretations.
Day two addresses enacting change, guiding participants in the design of context appropriate, evidence informed interventions that reflect real world organisational complexity.
Day three centres on evaluation and sustainability, enabling participants to critically appraise impact, surface emergent effects, and develop strategies for embedding resilience and maintaining improvement.
The course is taught by:
- Dr David Grant - Simulation, Patient Safety
- Dr Andrew Burnett
- Dr Anna Hurley-Wallace - Health Psychologist and Senior Research Associate
- Tom Jerrom - Safety and Improvement
- Stephen Brown - Healthcare Improvement
- Anne Frampton - Clinician and Healthcare Improvement
- Laura Pickup - Head of Human Factors UHBW NHS Foundation Trust
Please ensure you meet the following prerequisites before booking:
| Eligibility | This course is available to University of Bristol staff and postgraduate researchers only. Candidates must be able to fully attend the course and provide feedback. |
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| Conditions |
Pilot courses are extremely popular and all live sessions must be attended in full. You should only book onto this course if you are able to commit to attending in full and have time to provide detailed feedback. Attendance is monitored. Failure to attend in full, without a valid reason, will result in your access to pilot course materials being rescinded and you will not be permitted to attend any further pilot courses within the same academic year. |
Before booking this course, please make sure you read the information provided above about the target audience and prerequisites. It is important that you have access to the relevant IT resources needed for the course and meet the knowledge prerequisites to ensure you can get the most from the course.
Bookings are taken via our online booking system, for which you must register an account. To check if you are eligible for free or discounted courses please see our fees and voucher packs page. All bookings are subject to our terms and conditions, which can be read in full here.
For help and support with booking a course refer to our booking information page, FAQs or feel free to contact us directly. For available payment options please see: How to pay your short course fees.
Participants are granted access to our virtual learning platform (Blackboard Ultra) 1 to 2 weeks in advance of the course. This allows time for any pre-course work to be completed and to familiarise with the platform.
To gain the most from the course, we recommend that you attend in full and participate in all interactive components. We endeavour to record all live lecture sessions and upload these to the online learning environment within 24 hours. This allows course participants to review these sessions at leisure and revisit them multiple times. Please note that we do not record breakout sessions.
All course participants retain access to the online learning materials and recordings for 5 months after the course.