Enhancing Resident Education by Embedding Improvement Specialists Into a Quality and Safety Curriculum

Quality improvement and patient safety (QIPS) curricula are critical in graduate medical education, yet barriers limit the educational experience and project outcomes.

To explore the impact of QIPS curricular enhancements and integration of continuous improvement specialists (CIS) by examining the A3 document, the primary project product and surrogate for project quality.

Since 2009, University of Michigan internal medicine and medicine-pediatric residents participate in a QIPS curriculum, which includes a 4-week group project. In 2016, residency leaders collaborated with CIS staff, non-clinical experts in QIPS with backgrounds in engineering and business, to improve the curriculum. Informed by a needs assessment, the intervention was implemented in 2017 and consisted of a set of enhancements including integration of CIS staff into groups as co-facilitators. In this retrospective cohort study, a blinded reviewer evaluated all available A3 documents before and after the intervention using a quantitative analysis tool.

All residents participated in the curriculum during the pre-intervention (July 2009 to June 2016, n=351) and post-intervention (July 2017 to June 2020, n=148) periods. A total of 23 of 84 (27%) pre-intervention and 31 of 34 (91%) post-intervention A3 documents were available for review. Scores improved significantly for 17 of 23 (74%) A3 items and for 7 of 8 (88%) sections. Mean A3 total scores increased from 29.0 to 47.0 (95% CI 12.6-23.4; P<.001) out of a possible 69.0.

Embedding CIS experts into residency QIPS curricula is associated with improved A3 document quality.