Developing an Interprofessional Health Care Improvement Portfolio: Results From a Consensus Panel Process

The increased focus on professional-led, continuous health care improvement has not produced formalized processes for identifying, recognizing, and rewarding excellence in quality improvement. Moreover, the team-based nature of improvement requires a mechanism to document interprofessional contributions. In 2018, the authors created a health care improvement portfolio to document and demonstrate individual impact for the purpose of promotion. A draft portfolio was developed from a review of the literature and publicly available quality improvement and educational portfolios. The portfolio was further refined through a 2-round, modified Delphi consensus process with a panel of interprofessional experts across North America. In the first round, 35 panelists gave feedback through open-ended comments on the design and content of the portfolio. In the second round, 34 panelists rated the comprehensiveness and clarity of the portfolio on a scale of 1-9 (1 = lowest, 9 = highest) and provided comments. Consensus was defined as an average score over 8.0. Panelists in the second round achieved consensus, with average scores of 8.4 in comprehensiveness and 8.3 in clarity (range, 6-9). The finalized portfolio includes the following sections: personal statement; health care improvement training and certification; leadership and administrative roles; health care improvement project activities; health care improvement coaching, teaching, and curricular activities; health care improvement honors, awards, and recognitions; and supporting documents. The portfolio facilitates the documentation of health care professionals' contributions to and impact in health care improvement and covers the breadth of interprofessional health care improvement (i.e., projects, leadership, education, scholarship). The portfolio can be tailored to an individual's area of specific expertise. While this portfolio was originally developed for interprofessional faculty at academic institutions, the content and structure of the portfolio are easily adapted for health care providers in other health care settings.