Alla Smith, MD, is a senior resident at Boston Children’s Hospital. She wrote the following advice to medical students facing Match Day, the third Friday in March when graduating medical students learn where they will do their residencies. In the months leading up to Match Day, medical students submit a ranked list of the residencies that they are interested in, and the residency programs in turn submit their own ranked list of medical students. A computer matches the students to the residencies ... read full post

Editor’s Note Colleen McCormick is a fifth-year medical student in the combined MD/MPH Physician Leadership Development Program at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in Dayton, Ohio. For two months she used the IHI Open School Quality Improvement Practicum to conduct her first quality improvement project. In this final blog post, Colleen reflects on her project and her progress as a student trying to make a change in the health care system. You can catch up on her previous po ... read full post

By Eilidh G M Gunn, Medical Student, University of Dundee, Scotland As final-year medical students at the University of Dundee, Scotland, we are lucky enough to have the opportunity to undertake the IHI program as part of a month-long block surrounding patient safety and quality improvement. Ninewells Hospital and NHS Tayside, the trust where I am based, has longstanding patient safety and quality improvement initiatives and programs in place, which allow students like myself to become part of ... read full post

By Ariella Camera, Brandeis University“You can’t do this alone; you need to align with allies with shared interests to create change.” – Helen Bevan I recently attended IHI’s International Forum on Quality and Patient Safety in London, England. I spent four engaging days discussing quality improvement, diverse health care systems, reverse innovation, and leadership development. I am a second-year master’s candidate at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, s ... read full post

Dr. Don Berwick, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at IHI and Former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, answers your questions in our new blog series, “Ask Berwick.” Ask him about career tips, his days as a pediatrician, or his thoughts on leadership – all topics are open for discussion.   This week, Berwick discusses what he thinks is the most important trait for a young leader to have. Be sure to check back next week when Dr. Berwick answers a question ... read full post