Using a multisite and multi-health system pharmacy resident program model for care documentation quality improvement

To implement and evaluate a pharmacy resident documentation peer review process.

The University of Minnesota Postgraduate Year One Pharmacy Residency Program is a multisite program with 25 residents across 16 different health care organizations.

Sites within the program provide comprehensive medication management (CMM) services to patients in ambulatory care settings, including participation in the full patient care process of assessment, care plan development, follow-up, and appropriate documentation.

In this innovative peer review process model, residents undergo a deidentified CMM documentation review process with residents from other practice sites, exposing them to different documentation templates and perspectives.

A workgroup of residency preceptors led by a research team developed a peer review process, which evolved through 3 phases over 2 years in response to resident, preceptor, and administration team feedback. Resident feedback was compiled and analyzed.

Forty-two residents responded to the survey (67% response rate); 71% found the review process to be helpful. Residents reported that the process improved their understanding of how to improve patient care documentation (74%), how to provide peer feedback (90%), and the importance of effective interprofessional communication in clinical decision making (81%).

The core perceived benefit of the peer review process was exposure to how other health systems and practitioners document CMM. Some residents participate in a peer review process at their home institutions, which may explain some of the lack of perceived benefit. Generalizability of this study is limited by being within a single residency program with a relatively small number of participants.

Pharmacy residents found a peer review process of documentation to be helpful during their residency education. The process exposed residents to different documentation practices at various health care systems, which led to ideas of how to improve documentation and provided a foundation for how to provide peer feedback in practice.