NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and the Weill Cornell Internal Medicine residency program are committed to educating trainees on the importance of quality improvement (QI), patient safety, and high-value care. As part of this commitment, we have a dedicated Chief Resident of Quality Improvement.
This Chief Resident serves as an important leader and liaison for department- and hospital-level QI efforts. In addition, the Chief Resident is integrally involved in designing and implementing a dedicated QI and patient safety curriculum for residents, including the QI elective and patient safety conferences.
Starting intern year, QI concepts are introduced through a lecture series during the ambulatory block. Interns identify a problem from their own clinical experience and plan interventions to solve this issue with the help of dedicated faculty. During PGY-2 year, the Core Research block builds upon the intern QI curriculum through several sessions devoted to QI. Additionally, the Chief Resident of Quality Improvement facilitates the monthly Patient Safety Conference and reviews patient safety events with residents and QI leadership. The goal of this conference is to teach residents the tools used in root cause analyses to understand how these patient safety events occurred and how to prevent them.
For those interested in further experience in this area, the Patient Safety Elective provides an in-depth look at how the hospital approaches QI and patient safety. Residents in this elective participate in hands-on QI processes, from collecting reports from colleagues about patient care incidents to attending high-level meetings on how system improvements take shape.
Residents have published their QI projects with guidance and mentorship from QI faculty. Publications in QI over the past few years include research into end-of-life care and ICD deactivation, with a selection of publications shown below.
Ramsey Kalil, Daniel Y. Choi, Joshua D. Geleris, Jennifer I. Lee, and Michael P. Wagner. "Using clinical decision support tools to increase defibrillator deactivations in dying patients." BMJ Open Quality.
Daniel Y. Choi, Michael P. Wagner, Brian Yum, Deanna Pereira Jannat-Khah, Derek C. Mazique, Daniel J. Crossman, and Jennifer I. Lee. "Improving implantable cardioverter defibrillator deactivation discussions in admitted patients made DNR and comfort care." BMJ Open Quality 8.
Bold – current or former residents.
