Training sessions aims to prioritize Quality Improvement

By Lin Lofley

Students from UT Southwestern Medical School recently joined colleagues from two UT Arlington schools for a week of discussion, planning and role playing aimed at learning about Quality Improvement (QI) and Patient Safety to improve processes and reduce errors that impact the care of hospital patients.

Forty-seven students took part in the program, held at the American Airlines Training Center in Arlington. In a large seminar room, the 18 medical students, 16 graduate industrial engineer students, and 13 graduate nursing students were formed into a dozen teams, each with a case study to consider and a problem to solve.

Motivated, and armed with the quality improvement tools presented throughout the week, each group set out to complete a QI project and propose a solution to its given problem.

Quality training
Quality Improvement Boot Camp participants

“I thought the projects were terrific,” said Dr. Gary Reed, Chief Quality Officer of UT Southwestern University Hospitals & Clinics and Associate Dean for Quality, Safety, and Outcomes Education. With a smile, he added, “I hope the medical students here found this at least as exciting as neuroanatomy.

“The best thing about this week ought to be that you’ll know more about Quality Improvement than about 75 percent of the people you’re going to be working with,” said Dr. Reed, a Professor of Internal Medicine. “Exercises like this are important, too. After three or four of these projects it will become easier to understand what needs to be done. Like anything else, practice is important.”

The medical students, all of whom aim to graduate from UT Southwestern with Distinction in Quality Improvement, were well-regarded by their teammates. In a closing feedback session, participants from each team were asked to provide analysis of the projects and of their teammates.

“The medical students reminded us that we were once young, too,” observed an industrial engineering student, to laughter from her teammates. But a graduate nursing student – and the graduate nursing students already all had patient care experience in their repertoires – pointed out that “the medical students are very smart.”

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Dr. Reed holds S.T. Harris Family Distinguished Chair in Internal Medicine, in Honor of Gary Reed, M.D.; the Sinor/Pritchard (Katy Sinor and Kay Pritchard) Professorship in Medical Education Honoring Donald W. Seldin, M.D., and the Eva A. Rosenthal Professorship in Internal Medicine, in Honor of Gary Reed, M.D.