Both were also instrumental in developing SHM’s online VTE Resource Room and the VTE QI workbook.
Strong Responses
Twenty-seven hospitalists enrolled in the VTEPC in its first year of operation, 24 in the mentoring program and three in the consultation program.
Enrollees have broad experience in VTE prevention and QI. Some enrollees have been in practice for two years, others more than 25 years. Some fill QI leadership roles in their hospitals or hospital medicine groups. For others the VTE prevention project is their first experience leading a QI effort. Regional representation (19 states), hospital system representation (18 systems), hospital size (135 to 700 staffed beds), and hospital type (academic centers, community teaching hospitals, and community hospitals) are also broad. One enrollee works at a long-term acute care hospital, all others work at acute-care hospitals.
What They Said
Participants in the mentoring and consultation programs have reported that the support they’ve received has been enormously helpful.
According to feedback from one participant, support from the mentoring program made the potentially overwhelming prospect of launching a hospitalwide improvement effort much more manageable: “The prospect of launching a multihospital VTE Prevention Protocol was extremely daunting; however, with the help of my SHM mentor, we stand ready to pilot the program within the week. Our mentor carefully constructed a step-by-step process that allowed me to investigate the scope of the problem at the local level and develop a protocol that was embraced by our administration and physicians. He supplied me with resources and knowledge that allowed me to successfully handle multiple obstacles that arose along the way. What we have accomplished will have an enormous impact on the quality of care that we provide for our patients.”
Other participants have reported that having access to objective input from an external expert can help transform a slow-developing or ineffective prevention program. As one participant put it: “Mentoring through SHM’s VTE Prevention Collaborative has been an invaluable experience. Through monthly phone calls and frequent e-mails, our mentor focused our previously ineffective efforts and guided us to develop a streamlined tool that was custom-fit to the workflow at our hospital. He has saved us tremendous frustrations by directing us to the appropriate resources in our institution to accomplish tasks we would have attempted ourselves. Since our first phone call, he has been both our coach and cheerleader. The processes and techniques that he has taught us are applicable to every quality endeavor we engage in.”
What Impressed Experts
Drs. Maynard and Stein have been enormously impressed by what VTEPC members have achieved. “What is most impressive to me is how all these hospitalist project leaders in different settings are overcoming a wide variety of intuitional barriers, medical staff barriers, infrastructure barriers—all the obstacles that can challenge the typical big QI project,” says Dr. Maynard. He notes that not only are participants utilizing all the basic QI principles in all the ways that were outlined in the QI workbook, but they also are coming up with innovations and approaches beyond what the workbook authors envisioned.
“We learn from them as they come up with innovations to meet their own challenges,” Dr. Stein says. “It shows the resilience and flexibility of the QI framework. If you really work in your local setting on these things with the improvement framework in mind you can get by almost any barrier.” Drs. Maynard and Stein have noted that participants have been able to design and implement VTE prevention programs at a pace that far outstrips what the two mentors achieved at their home institutions.