Resident Quality Improvement
The residency program has adjusted the PGY-1 Research/QI curriculum to increase resident skills in conducting Quality Improvement (QI), an ACGME common program requirement. These semi-monthly meetings prepare interns to apply QI techniques in clinical practice, expose them to potential future career options in quality, analytics and research, and help them build relationships with mentors. It can even strengthen fellowship applications as QI is “hot” and there are opportunities to present and publish this kind of work. At orientation, the strength of interventions was reviewed.
The PGY-1 enhanced QI curriculum guides residents through the following project development steps:
- Identify a problem in health system possibly using root cause analysis
- Literature search – to determine effectiveness of previous interventions
- Meet with mentor/Principal Investigator
- Consult with stakeholders and consider unintended consequences
- Determine baseline metrics and measurable outcomes
- Prioritize options and to determine the most feasible and effective intervention.
- Project outline
- Proposal presentation
- IRB/Epic implementation
- Prepare poster for Research/QI Day or other meeting
In these semi-monthly meetings residents are also being introduced to Slicer Dicer and TriNetX. These database tools can help the residents explore patient cohorts and determine the feasibility of their QI projects and future research studies. Rachel Salyer, PhD, the resident research analyst, has been adding additional writing, presentation, database utilization resources to the Internal Medicine Education SOLE page that is available to all faculty.
Please be ready to assist interns when they come to you at an early stage in their training and project development. As they are still learning our health system, they may not have a clear idea of the feasibility of their ideas and will need your perspective. Please feel free to provide feedback and even to suggest alternative ideas. Remember that alignment with institutional goals is very helpful for resident projects as it can facilitate implementation.