Quality improvement (QI) education has become increasingly seen as core content in graduate medical education, said Brian Wong, MD, FRCPC, of the University of Toronto. One of the most common strategies for teaching QI is to have residents participate in a QI project, in which hospitalists often take a leading role.
“Given the investment made and time spent carrying out these projects, it is important to know whether or not the training has led to the desired outcome from both a learning and a project standpoint,” Dr. Wong said, which is why he coauthored a recent editorial on the subject in BMJ Quality and Safety. QI educators have long recognized that it’s difficult to know whether the education was successful.
“For example, if the project was not successful, does it matter if the residents learned key QI principles that they were able to apply to their project work?” Dr. Wong noted. “Our perspective extends this discussion by asking, ‘What does success look like in QI education?’ We argue that rather than focusing on whether the project was successful or not, our real goal should be to create QI educational experiences that will ensure that residents change their behaviors in future practice to embrace QI as an activity that is core to their everyday work.”
Hospitalists have an important role in that. “They can set the stage for learners to recognize just how important it is to incorporate QI into daily work. Through this role modeling, residents who carry out QI projects can see that the lessons learned contribute to lifelong engagement in QI.”
Dr. Wong’s hope is to focus on the type of QI experience that fosters long-term behavior changes.
“We want residents, when they graduate, to embrace QI, to volunteer to participate in organizational initiatives, to welcome practice data and reflect on it for the purposes of continuous improvement, to collaborate interprofessionally to make small iterative changes to the care delivery system to ensure that patients receive the highest quality of care possible,” he said. “My hope is that we can start to think differently about how we measure success in QI education.”
Reference
1. Myers JS, Wong BM. Measuring outcomes in quality improvement education: Success is in the eye of the beholder. BMJ Qual Saf. 2019 Mar 18. doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2018-008305.
