Event highlights
As part of its collaboration with the Ministry of Health of Montenegro, the WHO Office on Quality of Care and Patient Safety in Athens, Greece, together with the WHO Country Office in Montenegro, designed and delivered the country’s first Executive Training Programme on Quality of Care and Patient Safety in Podgorica from 8 September to 25 November 2025.
This pioneering initiative – one of the first executive training programmes of its kind in the WHO European Region – supports implementation of Montenegro’s National Strategy for Healthcare Quality and forms part of broader efforts to strengthen the quality and safety of health services by investing in building capacity and a strong safety culture.
More information about the training
The executive training brought together over 50 participants from across the national health system for a blended learning journey. Participants took part in 15 online webinars and interactive sessions and 3 in-person workshops in Podgorica. They were organized into small groups early on to co-develop institution-based quality improvement projects, drawing on real challenges encountered in their everyday work.
The programme aimed to strengthen understanding of the strategic importance of quality of care and patient safety for resilient health systems, while supporting participants to apply core concepts – such as systems thinking, safety culture and human factors – in their everyday work. It focused on practical skills in using data, indicators and quality improvement tools; strengthening leadership and teamwork for quality and safety, including the engagement of patients, families and caregivers; and supporting participants to design and implement small-scale, data-driven quality improvement projects in their own institutions. It also helped foster a shared language and a national network on quality of care and patient safety.
To advance these objectives, the training focused on a set of core topics, including:
- foundations of quality of care: definitions, a whole-system approach, key dimensions and basic approaches to measurement;
- quality improvement methods and tools, including the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle and the use of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) indicators;
- patient safety culture, systems thinking and human factors – including incident reporting and root cause analysis and addressing key safety priorities, such as medication safety, safe surgery, and infection prevention and control; and
- communication and teamwork for safer, person-centred care, with a focus on patient engagement and empowerment.
“This programme is an important step in our efforts to strengthen quality of care and patient safety in Montenegro. By bringing together teams from across the health system, we are building a shared approach to improving care for all patients,” said Dr Irena Subarić, Director General for Quality Control of Health Care and Promoting Human Resources, Ministry of Health of Montenegro.
Participants acknowledged the programme’s relevance to their roles, highlighting its practical applicability, the combination of theory and tools to support improvement, and the interactive format that encouraged discussion and sharing across institutions.
At the final in-person workshop on 25 November 2025, teams presented interim results from the group-based quality improvement projects, discussed challenges and lessons learned, and explored ways to sustain and scale up successful changes.
“This executive training reflects our joint commitment with the Ministry of Health to make quality of care and patient safety a practical priority in all services. The strong engagement of participants shows that health workers are ready to apply these approaches in their daily work and to sustain improvements over time,” noted Dr Mina Brajović, WHO Representative in Montenegro.
“Montenegro is among the first countries in the WHO European Region to invest in an executive training fully dedicated to quality of care and patient safety. The experience and results from this programme will help us support other Member States and show how leadership development and group-based projects can drive practical improvements in health services,” added Dr João Breda, Head of the WHO Office on Quality of Care and Patient Safety in Athens.
To complement the training, participants completed a multiple-choice pre- and post-assessment on quality of care and patient safety, including brief case scenarios to measure changes in understanding of core concepts. In parallel, evaluation findings demonstrated high satisfaction and strong perceived relevance: the overall training was rated on average 4.3 out of 5, and participants submitted over 900 written comments, highlighting the practical, interactive and immediately applicable nature of the sessions.
Next steps
As part of the next phase of the programme, participating teams will further implement and refine their quality improvement projects within their institutions. They will monitor data and submit a structured project report summarizing the problems addressed, interventions tested, results, lessons learned and plans for sustainability and scale-up. A 6-month follow-up is planned to review progress, explore how participants have applied concepts and tools in their workplaces, document examples of institutional change and identify next steps to strengthen quality of care and patient safety across Montenegro’s health services.