An interprofessional postgraduate quality improvement curriculum: results and lessons learned over a 5-year implementation

Abstract

Problem: Quality Improvement (QI) is interprofessional by nature; however, most academic QI programs occur in silos and do not leverage the opportunity to bring interprofessional learners together. Intervention: To evaluate QI competencies of physician, nursing, pharmacy, behavioral health, and social work residents after participating in a longitudinal QI curriculum. Lessons learned are shared to guide educators in developing QI curriculum for interprofessional learners. Context: Cohorts of graduate students over 5 years participated in a QI curriculum that aligned with each professions’ core quality competencies. Residents engaged in didactics and experiential learning in primary care clinics. Impact: All learners (N = 74) demonstrated improvement in QI knowledge measured by the QIKAT-R and applied their skills demonstrated by completion of a QI project presented at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement annual forums. Participation in QI curriculum resulted in knowledge and skill improvement. Lessons learned: An experiential QI curriculum is a natural place to bring diverse post-graduate learners together to improve QI knowledge and skills. Successful QI curriculum goals are to (a) align projects with institutional and stakeholder goals, (b) include coaches to promote teamwork and project management, (c) narrow project scope, (d) develop an improvement mindset that failures are learning opportunities, and (e) address needs for data access.