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Agency Personnel and Training Database Schema Now Available
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The OpenISES Project has now made available the database schema for the Agency Personnel and Training Database created by Mike Harris. This database project is envisioned as the core project around which numerous other agency or service specific programs will be created. We are looking for someone to step forward and take the role of lead developer on this project. Take a look at the ground work that has been laid down, and let us know if this is something you think you may be interested in.

Total Quality Management for Emergency Services Project
Welcome to the TQM for Emergency Services Project. This TQM instructional project is part of The OpenISES Project (Open Information Systems for Emergency Services).
Introduction to the Project
In this project, our goal is to bring to you the materials needed to introduce your agency to the Total Quality Management style of leadership that was championed by W. Edwards Deming. We firmly believe that this style of leadership is clearly needed in today's emergency service agencies.

We plan on doing accomplishing this goal through the publication of books and training materials that focus on TQM in an emergency service setting. Unlike other TQM materials you may have seen or read, these materials will focus on TQM in the emergency service arena. They include examples taken directly from actual scenarios.

The Textbook - Now Available!
TQM for Emergency Services textbook The first item to be released in this project is the textbook, "Total Quality Management for Emergency Services: An Introduction" by Robert W. Austin. This is the 3rd edition of the textbook, now a part of the OpenISES Project. The textbook looks at the management and leadership philosophy of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, and how his principles of Total Quality Management can be put to use in the field of emergency services.

Total Quality Management provides the means for any organization to more efficiently and effectively respond to the current and future needs of the communities they serve. It has at its foundation strong leadership and high quality characteristics. To understand the philosophy of Total Quality Management, the book examines the two areas that comprise the foundation of Total Quality Management; Quality and Leadership.

The single most important improvement of TQM is that it focuses on system problems, not worker problems. This is attributed to Dr. Deming's 85-15 rule, which states that 85% of the problems in any organization are system related, while only 15% is worker related. In TQM, individual systems are observed, and methods are developed to improve the system. This resulted in TQM ideals moving the quality process a significant step forward. In this book, we describe how to move from a 'traditional' managed system to a quality leadership system.

Since the debut of the TQM ideology, it has been used in many fields, from manufacturing to service organizations to government. The value of TQM is being discovered in the United States and across the world, and TQM methods are slowly but steadily replacing traditional Quality Control methods. It is not an easy transition, but this textbook shows how it can be done.

The textbook describes Dr. Deming's "14 Obligations" of leadership and the "Ten Deadly Diseases" that can kill any quality project. It describes how to determine where your agency is in relation to how it views quality, and how the culture of the agency can effect its performance. The textbook also describes the tools used by quality professionals, including data collection, flow charting, cause and effect charts, Pareto charts, scatter charts and histograms. Throughout the book, examples from emergency service agencies are included.

It is said the Albert Einstein defined insanity as, "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." If your agency is not improving, perhaps it is time to try something different. Total Quality Management for Emergency Services will show you how you can change things.

To Get a Copy

Download a Copy
There are several ways that you can obtain a copy of the manual. You can download it it two different formats from this site; Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format or Open Document (odt) format. Both of these downloads are free downloads, and the manual is released under the Creative Commons license.

Purchase a Copy
We now have available printed versions of the manual made available for purchase through The OpenISES Store. The manual is exactly the same as the download version, including size (8.5 x 11). The printed manual will have wire binding, allowing you to easily lay the book flat. All proceeds from sales at the OpenISES Store help to maintain and expand the OpenISES Project.

Other Items Under Development

Lesson Plans
We are currently updating and improving the lessons plans that accompany the textbook. See our Lesson Plans page for more up to date information.

Lesson Presentations
In addition to the lesson plans, we are working on the classroom presentations as well. See our Presentations page for more up to date information.

In the Future...
We are looking at a few other things as well. Once we have more to tell, we will announce it here. Stay tuned!

Discussion Forums
We have setup a forum to discuss issues related to the creation of training materials for Emergency Service agencies. If you have any comments that you feel will be of use to the development team, please post them in the forum (http://eduforge.org/forum/?group_id=157).
The OpenISES Project

The goal of the OpenISES Project (http://openises.sourceforge.net)is to create open source software and materials that is aimed to fill the needs of the emergency services community. There is a need for open source training materials in the emergency service community, and the OpenISES project is trying to help fill that need.

The Medical Training Project for EMS is the first non-software project developed for the OpenISES Project.