Teaching Quality Improvement in a Pediatric Residency Program

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires residents to demonstrate competence in practice-based learning and improvement (PBLI) and systems-based practice (SBP), two competencies dependent on the principles and practice of quality improvement (QI). In addition, pediatric residents at VCUHS are required to complete a QI project during their residency. We judged the pediatric residents to be sub-par in achieving these competencies as demonstrated by the quality of projects submitted during the last academic year, and set out to improve the QI education they receive by designing a longitudinal curriculum integrating both didactic (using lectures and on-line modules provided through the Institute for Healthcare Improvement) and experiential learning (by having residents develop their own QI projects). In the Fall of 2017, we added a structured PBLI experience to this curriculum through the residents’ primary group clinical practice in order to provide a hands-on learning opportunity. Each resident practice group was tasked with design, implementation, and analysis of a QI project based on the groups’ practice data. We reasoned that the learning acquired through participation in a structured QI experience, through the group practice, will enhance their understanding of QI principles and therefore improve their completion of personal projects. Implementation and data gathering is currently on-going