The Health Innovations Scholars Program

Abstract

Dramatic changes in health care require physician leadership. Efforts to instill necessary skills often occur late in training. The Heath Innovations Scholars Program (HISP) provided preclinical medical students with experiential learning focused on process improvement. Students led initiatives to improve the discharge process for stroke patients. All students completed an aptitude survey and Quality Improvement Knowledge Assessment Test (QIKAT) before and after the program. Significant improvements occurred across subject areas of leadership (18.4%, P < .001), quality and safety (14.7%, P < .001), and health care systems operations (21.2%, P < .008), and in the domains of knowledge (25.9%, P < .001) and skills (25.2%, P < .001). Average cumulative QIKAT results improved significantly (8.33 to 9.83, P = .04). Three of 4 recommended interventions were implemented. Furthermore, students engaged in other process improvement work on return to their home institutions. The HISP successfully advanced preclinical medical students' ability to lead clinical systems improvement.

Leadership Training in Undergraduate Medical Education: A Systematic Review

“…Twelve unique interventions were described, with two pairs of articles publishing different data about the same intervention at the same school. [15][16][17][18]…”

“…The largest cohort size was over 200 participants in the Chicago's UMed Program of University of Illinois College of Medicine, and the smallest was six participants in the University of Colorado's Health Innovation Scholars Program. 18,19 The average cohort size across all interventions was 53 students. Length of intervention ranged from longitudinal programs spanning all four years of the medical curriculum, such as the Quality Improvement Track implemented at the University of Chicago, to programs lasting only a summer or less than a single day, such as half-day leadership workshops offered to MD-PhD students at Vanderbilt University.…”

“…22,28 The Health Innovation Scholars Program (HISP) at the University of Colorado created an alumni network for all participants to join that allow them to share career developments, and consequently, many alumni have held "spread events" at their own institutions that are modeled after HISP. 18 Additionally, 88% of HISP participants were involved in quality improvement in their career and 70% held leadership positions. 17 Operation Bushmaster at the Uniformed Services University was unique in that intervention participants were not surveyed or interviewed to evaluate their own leadership skills and experience during the intervention.…”

Is the delivery of a quality improvement education programme in obstetrics and gynaecology for final year medical students feasible and still effective in a shortened time frame?

“…Providing opportunities for student and junior doctors to develop skills in QI will help ensure they are equipped to lead improvements in their future clinical practice [4, 6, 12, 13]. These skills are essential to ensure clinicians can critique the healthcare settings in which they work, [15] by becoming acquainted with evidence-based guidelines, able to critically evaluate the outcome of an audit and utilise this knowledge to improve care [16].…”

“…Professional colleges have also taken up the challenge and now require their fellows to undertake QI projects (QIPs) for their ongoing professional development and vocational accreditation. Whilst providing training in effective QI skills has typically received little attention in medical curricula, the few published reports have demonstrated improved knowledge, processes of care and patient outcomes with the curricula generally being well accepted [1–6]. …”