Center For Healthcare Studies

1. Quality Improvement Learning in the Education Centered Medical Home:Student Questions and Self-Evaluation of QI Skills Kristen M Unti1; Adrian Nicholas Gaty1; Lindsay DiMarco, MPH2; Daniel B Evans, MD3; Donna Woods, EdM, PhD2 1Medical Student, Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, 2Center for Healthcare Studies, 3General Internal Medicine, Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine Results Background The quality of the healthcare delivered in the United States is a growing concern, and accurate assessment of the quality of care is becoming a required competency for the next generation of physicians. Yet, in the majority of current medical school curricula, little time or effort is put toward educating medical students in the assessment of the quality of care that they are providing. Across all of the assessed quality measurement and improvement skills in the Likert-scale questions, 32% of students said they were moderately to extremely comfortable with their QI skills and only 23% said not at all. Over half of the students felt moderately to extremely comfortable with "Writing a clear problem statement (goal, aim),” and approximately a third of the students felt moderately to extremely comfortable with: “Applying the best professional knowledge" (38%); "Using measurement to improve your skills" (39%); "Identifying best practices and comparing these to your local practice/skills” (34%); "Implementing a structured plan to test a change" (32%); and "Building your next improvement upon prior success or failure" (37%). Students reported being only slightly comfortable with: "Making changes in a system" (42%) and "Using small cycles of change" (49%). The students felt “not at all” comfortable with: "Using the PDSA model as a systematic framework for trial and learning" (59%). After coding and analyzing common themes in the students’ free responses and notecards, 22% of the ECMH students reported needing more training and practice in how to record quality metrics. Additionally, 14% of the students wanted to learn more about how to apply the findings they uncover with their quality data. In terms of validity of the data, 7% of students were concerned with comprehensiveness and accuracy of the standards. Interestingly, 17% of the students reported having no further questions or concerns, but that is likely due to not even knowing what to ask. Methods In a pioneering endeavor to bring continuity of care to students’ medical education, Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine began an IRB-approved project in September 2011 called the Education-Centered Medical Home (ECMH), combining the ideas behind a “patient-centered medical home” with an emphasis on comprehensive education including continuity, team-based care, and patient safety and quality improvement. There are presently 213 students in 13 ECMH clinic practices. Conclusions An initial experience of reporting quality metrics for patients being seen in the students’ ECMH is a strong learning vehicle for learning the nuance of abstracting data for quality metrics and constructing the quality measures. This exercise opened many questions for students that they may not have otherwise considered how to incorporate quality assessment into clinical practice. Student self-assessment results suggest that asking students to actually construct quality measures is a good introduction to quality reporting. Center For Healthcare Studies