Med schools focus on quality improvement, patient safety

Improving quality and safety has been a focal point in medical education for more than a decade, but improvements have not been dramatic. Here ’s a look at how some medical schools are changing their curriculum—and cultures—to make greater strides through their work with the AMA’sAccelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium.Thinking about safety improvement and taking action in Georgia Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta this fall continues its project to create a standardized education in quality improvement and patient safety among its medical students, residents, fellows, faculty, affiliated physicians and interprofessional colleagues spread among four different health systems. Students that entered last fall were part of the first class that will experience all of the quality improvement and patient safety activities being added into each year of the school ’s undergraduate curriculum.“Hopefully, going forward, students will have a more robust toolset and if something happens they will get involved and make a change,” said Nathan O. Spell, MD, chief quality officer at Emory University Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Emory. New this fall, third year medical students will be excused from clinical rotation so they can come back to the classroom and talk about their first-person experiences with patient safety and quality improvement.“When they come back, we can ask, ‘What did you see? How did you analyze the situation...
Source: AMA Wire - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Source Type: news