Goal:
Students will strengthen their concern for the patient’s need to receive quality health care in a safe environment, develop strategies and tools to identify medical errors in patient care and weaknesses in the health care system, and apply those methods to address medical errors and system errors in the health care delivery system.
Objectives:
Students completing the Patient Safety/Quality Improvement clerkship will:
*STEEEP Principles
S – Safe Care: The patient's safety comes first.
T – Timely Care: Patient care will be delivered in the most timely manner possible.
E – Effective Care: Patient care will be based upon the best science available.
E – Efficient Care: Patient care will avoid waste of time, money, and resources.
E – Equitable Care: Access to care will be provided to all in an equitable manner.
P – Patient-Centered Care: Patients will participate fully in care decisions.
- Discuss importance of improvement in both performance and process in practice and health care.
- Identify weaknesses in the health care delivery system and medical errors they have encountered during their clinical training.
- Utilize a root cause analysis approach to identify and address problems in the health care system.
- Work as members of the health care team to develop and/or perform a study and make recommendations for improving at least one aspect of the health care delivery system.
- Prepare a report and/or present a project presentation describing the problem they have identified and the process for improving performance related to that problem.
Format:
Clerkship parameters are explained to students at the orientation for the senior year scheduling. Three hours of instruction are presented. This consists of Making the Case for Quality, Quality in Action, Role of Physicians in Quality Improvement, the basics of how to do QI, and examples of QI Projects. At the end of the instruction, students perform a case-based root cause analysis of a clinical problem, and present their findings and potential solutions to the class. After completion of this instruction, students develop a project by the end of January in their senior year.
A list of ongoing projects or those in need of being done as identified by the University Medical Center Alliance (UMCA) is provided to students. Students select to participate in an ongoing Patient Safety/QI project within teaching hospitals, or design their own project. Teams may include a resident, attending physician, nurse, pharmacist, and/or other health care professionals. Each student will do a report on his or her project.
Outcome:
A report is completed by the beginning of February of the year of graduation. An electronic copy of the report is submitted to the Associate Dean for Outcomes Research and Improvement. This report is forwarded to the QI Officer of the respective institution/clinic. Annually in June, the UMCA publishes a list of the projects and actions taken to improve the health care system throughout Tennessee and particularly, in Memphis.
