Jersey Shore University Medical Center, Neptune, NJ
Process Improvement Training in Resident Education

Abstract

Background: Patient safety and quality have become the major focus of healthcare, but residents are provided with little or no process improvement training. The ACGME requires residency programs to include patient safety and healthcare quality as 2 of the 6 core competencies, so teaching institutions must develop structured process improvement training programs and incorporate them into the resident educational tract. Standardized tools for measuring the effectiveness of training programs are limited.

Methods: We developed a process improvement curriculum titled “Becoming an Agent of Change.” The training included IHI Open School patient safety and quality improvement modules, 8 classroom sessions during 6 months, team/individual coaching, and group/independent activities to develop process improvement projects. The curriculum was implemented in the Ob/Gyn and pediatrics residency programs. We administered a Quality Assessment and Improvement Curriculum Toolkit 12-question pretest to measure self-perception of 12 core process improvement/quality improvement skills and benchmarked the scores against 2 scoring models: Oyler from the University of Chicago Medical Center and O'Neill from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. A posttest was administered at the completion of the training program.

Results: Pretest results indicated that Jersey Shore University Medical Center (JSUMC) and Feinberg residents demonstrated similar baseline self-assessments of the 12 core quality improvement skills. JSUMC residents demonstrated a higher comfort level in 11 of 12 skills compared to residents at the University of Chicago. However, JSUMC residents possessed only slight to moderate comfort with quality improvement skills, with the lowest comfort assessed in PDSA methodology. The posttest was administered in April 2015. The results are to be reported in June 2015.

Conclusions: A structured process improvement training program built into resident education increases comfort with process improvement methodology/tools and facilitates awareness and involvement in future process improvement initiatives.