Quality Improvement
Quality Improvement (QI) is taught through a variety of curricular activities. All residents are involved in population health and panel management activities during their outpatient training. They receive quality metric data about their own panel of outpatients and work with their longitudinal preceptor to improve care delivery.
All PGY-2 residents participate in a team-based longitudinal QI project. They learn QI principles and tools in an experiential manner by working on real problems that impact the quality of patient care within the residency program or department. Each PGY-2 cohort is supervised by a member of the faculty who has expertise in QI. Residents have the opportunity to participate in scholarship related to the project. Past resident-led QI work has included reducing disparities in colorectal cancer screening, improving time to antibiotics in inpatient sepsis management, reducing unnecessary lab testing, and improving the outside hospital transfer process.
Patient Safety
We have a robust patient safety curriculum that begins in the intern year. All interns participate in an interactive small group work which focuses on practical skills in patient safety event reporting and root cause analysis of safety events at Penn Medicine. This includes an interactive root cause analysis involving peers from other residency training programs. Additionally, all residents learn skills in adverse event disclosure and the real-time analysis of safety events on interprofessional inpatient teams. We also have a recurring case-based noon conference which is led by residents and faculty and focuses on topics including M&M, good catch cases in patient safety, and GME-wide themes in patient safety.
Residents who are interested in exploring quality improvement and/or patient safety as a career can apply to the Healthcare Leadership in Quality Track during the fall of their intern year.