Although two Institute of Medicine reports say medical educators fall short on giving physician residents the skills they need to make sure patients get safe, high quality care, fewer than 20% of U.S. medical schools and residency programs today offer this kind of training.
To address these serious gaps, SHM and the Committee of Interns and Residents Policy and Education Initiative (CIR PEI) are partnering to run Resident Quality Improvement Clinics at Harlem Hospital Center and Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center. Resident physicians at these two hospitals have been actively engaged in patient safety and quality initiatives.
Dr. Wright
“This is a great opportunity for our doctors in training,” says Harlem Hospital Medical Director Maurice Wright, MD. “Most physicians deliver care as a part of a multidisciplinary team. They must garner the knowledge and skills necessary to provide high quality and safe healthcare within a team model. This training will give them the knowledge and skills needed to create effective systems for care delivery.”
Under the auspices of the CIR PEI QI Innovation Institute, the QI clinics will provide residents at Harlem Hospital Center and Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center with the knowledge, skills, and professional development required to champion quality improvement and patient safety practices and apply their newly acquired knowledge to the development of a quality improvement project.
SHM will be applying many of the principles from its existing programs to the new program. The organization, which represents hospitalists, has been teaching quality improvement through its Quality and Safety Educators Academy and award-winning mentorship programs to hundreds of hospitalists and hospitals nationwide.
“We are thrilled to participate in this groundbreaking program,” SHM President Burke Kealey, MD, SFHM, says. “We fully expect that this program will build competencies in patient safety and quality improvement for residents and educators and—in the process—improve the quality of care delivered at these hospitals.”
SHM will also be offering quality improvement content to medical students, residents, and early-career hospitalists at its annual meeting in March in National Harbor, Md., just outside of Washington, D.C. (www.hospitalmedicine2015.org).
Resident physicians at Harlem are eager to begin working with the SHM mentors.
“This is a wonderful learning opportunity to enable resident doctors to enhance not only our clinical skills but organizational and administrative skills that will, overall, impact healthcare in a more meaningful way,” Harlem resident Paroma Mitra, MD, says. “And we’ll become better spokespeople on direct issues that impact patients.”
Brendon Shank is SHM’s associate vice president of communications. This article was adapted from a January 20 joint press release from SHM and the CIR Policy and Education Initiative (CIR PEI).