Development of a Performance Improvement Program: A Workplace-Based Educational Intervention on Magnetic Resonance...

Performance improvement (PI) programs are an educational tool used to analyze clinical performance of clinicians. The effect of this tool has not been fully explored in orthopedic and trauma surgery.

A needs assessment was conducted in connection with a worldwide webinar on magnetic resonance imaging in spinal injuries to identify the clinical need for an educational intervention. A 3-step PI process was defined and implemented over a 6-month period in 1 hospital department. Opportunities for improvement were identified by applying a 10-item quality checklist to 26 cases. A focused educational intervention was delivered to address the identified gaps, and a set of 22 posteducation cases was compared.

The department of radiology and the department of trauma surgery of a level I university hospital participated in this study.

A total of 26 cases collected before the educational intervention showed several areas for potential improvement. Important information was not provided by the surgeons in their communication with the radiologist. The educational intervention outlined the data and suggested actions. Comparing the information transfer of the preintervention and postintervention data, there was a significant improvement following the intervention (p = 0.0013).

Our PI program was able to demonstrate a significant influence on the behavior and the attitude of surgeons and radiologists.