Ongoing Self-review and Continuous Quality Improvement Among Family Medicine Residencies

Abstract

Graduate medical education (GME) occurs during and is a crucial step of the transition between medical school and clinical practice. Residency program graduates’ abilities to provide optimal patient care, act as role models, and demonstrate excellence, compassion, professionalism, and scholarship are key elements and outcomes of successful GME programs. In order to create and maintain the training environment that leads to such outcomes, programs must continually review and revise their patient care and educational activities. Currently, compliance with accreditation standards as determined by individual specialties such as family medicine serves as a common and significant marker for program quality. Compliance with these requirements is necessary but not sufficient if faculty and residents want to achieve the goal of residency training in terms continually improving and optimizing the care they provide to their patients and communities. For overall program improvement to truly occur, the patient care, scholarship, and community activities of current residents and graduates must be assessed and used in program improvement activities. Appropriately applied to programs and using these assessments, quality improvement principles and tools have the potential to improve outcomes of patient care in residents’ current and future practice and improve programs in educating residents.

Soaring to New Heights: Strengthening Outcomes and Assessment in Residency

“…Further, in the absence of a formal knowledge-sharing system, a wealth of experiential wisdom is siloed rather than shared between program directors (PDs). 2 A rising tide raises all ships! So, we might ask: in what novel ways can PDs measure and take pride in describing their program's strengths and outcomes?…”

A Faculty Development Model for Academic Leadership Education Across A Health Care Organization

“…11 Program directors who participated also had higher board pass rates for graduates in their programs. 12 Most recently, a 12-year experience of a leadership program at the University of California, San Francisco articulated the impact on participants at the individual, interpersonal and organizational levels. 13 Several themes emerged from existing literature that were used in our course development.…”

The Impact of Self-directed Learning on the Future of Family Medicine Education

“…9 Health care and its family medicine footprint will not realize its full potential and be able to adapt to new innovations unless QI becomes an intrinsic part of everyone's day, from training and beyond. 10,11 Self-directed learning has become a focus of undergraduate and graduate medical education. With the advent of virtual classrooms and workplaces, and the recently approved Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) revisions promoting more flexibility in residency education, equipping learners with skills in accurate self-assessment is more paramount than ever.…”