Quality improvement, housestaff, and the role of chief residents

Little is known about the role of chief residents in utilizing and promoting continuous quality improvement (CQI) and quality assurance (QA) methods with housestaff. The purpose of this study was to ascertain how chief residents could be involved more formally in improving the quality of care in a major public teaching hospital.

Fourteen chief residents on the major services at Boston City Hospital participated in early 1994 in either a focus group or an individual interview. Data were analyzed qualitatively using a grounded-theory methodology.

The chief residents saw themselves as central to service delivery, teaching, and administration of the hospital. While they identified many role conflicts and system obstacles to providing quality patient care, they were uniformly positive about the contributions they made to Boston City Hospital and its patient population. They distinguished between formal QA and the major improvements they made on their services. Very few knew much about CQI methodology.

Given increasing competition as a result of the rapid growth in managed care, hospitals with residency programs, especially public hospitals, must integrate their teaching programs into patient care models. Chief residents and the housestaff they supervise receive little training in CQI methods. As housestaff will be training and practicing in an environment where costs and quality will be intertwined, chief residents, with their credibility, contacts, and concern, can help incorporate CQI into the environment of graduate medical education.