Quality Improvement Projects

Overview

We view scholarship as a critical opportunity for trainees to expand and enhance understanding of their role within the larger healthcare system, to explore new career trajectories, and to become agents of change in healthcare.

Curriculum

• Early in the second year, residents receive training in the Model for Improvement method.
• They then participate in a longitudinal quality improvement project with an interprofessional group of trainees that includes Psychology, Pharmacy, and Nurse Practitioner residents.
• Results are presented at Grand Rounds in the spring.
• Residents also have the opportunity for advanced training in quality improvement methods and to pursue their own projects through the course of their training.
• The program additionally supports scholarship in the form of clinical or public health research.
• Residents are eligible for protected time for individual quality improvement and research projects.
• All residents are encouraged to submit their projects or clinical vignettes to regional and national academic meetings. 
• Funds are available to assist with registration and travel expenses.

Examples of prior projects

• Increasing access to naloxone in Primary Care for patients on chronic opioid therapy
• Implementation of integrated Behavioral Health in a rural Primary Care clinic
• Reducing inappropriate prescribing of proton pump inhibitors in Primary Care
• Increasing access to HIV prophylaxis in the Primary Care setting
• Pharmacy directed outpatient gout management
• Patient experience of shared medical appointments