Teaching Internal Medicine Residents Quality Improvement and Patient Safety: A Lean Thinking Approach

Abstract

Patient safety (PS) and quality improvement (QI) are among the highest priorities for all health systems. Resident physicians are often at the front lines of providing care for patients. In many instances, however, QI and PS initiatives exclude trainees. By aligning the goals of the health system with those of the residency program to engage residents in QI and PS projects, there is a unique opportunity to fulfill both a corporate and educational mission to improve patient care. Here, the authors briefly describe one residency program's educational curriculum to provide foundational knowledge in QI and PS to all its trainees and highlight a resident team-based project that applied principles of lean thinking to evaluate the process of responding to an in-hospital cardiopulmonary arrest. This approach provided residents with a practical experience but also presented an opportunity for trainees to align with the health system's approach to improving quality and safety.

Engaging Residents and Fellows to Improve Institution-Wide Quality

“…Residents and fellows across specialties have advanced dozens of projects, which differentiates our program from other QI educational interventions. [22][23][24][25][26] As this study shows, our program also provides residents and fellows with opportunities to identify and act on system errors, advocate for optimal systems, coordinate specialty-relevant care within the system, and incorporate cost-awareness considerations-all of which are components of SBP. 6 These aspects make our incentive program particularly relevant to the growing number of academic physicians who face challenges working at the intersection of QI and medical education.…”

Addressing the Scholarly Activity Requirements for Residents: One Program's Solution

“…1 Several programs that have successfully integrated scholarly activities, including research or quality improvement, for residents in different specialties have been described in the litearture. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] However, few have included information about common measures of scholarly activity, such as academic presentations or publications, to determine success of such educational interventions.…”

Patient Safety Education: What Was, What Is, and What Will Be?

“…[10][11][12] Large-scale efforts to produce and implement international patient safety and quality improvement curricula are ongoing; a few examples of these are listed next. Medical schools have adopted pieces of these curricula and have created a variety of novel solutions tailored to their needs as well.…”