Development of a Longitudinal Quality and Safety Curriculum for Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellows

Abstract

In this article, we describe the development and assessment of a 2-year longitudinal quality improvement (QI) and patient safety curriculum that matches didactic education with experiential learning in a pediatric emergency medicine fellowship. The curriculum includes the development of a comprehensive didactic series and an improvement project identified, designed, and implemented by the fellows. The curriculum was assessed through a questionnaire administered before and after participation in the curriculum, along with an evaluation of the clinical impact of the completed project and assessment of a scholarly product. There was an increase in comfort with QI tools including run and control charts and in familiarity with differences between QI and traditional clinical research after completion of the QI curriculum. Fellows agreed that QI would be beneficial to their careers and felt that they were more likely to be involved in a future QI project. The fellow-derived project was integrated into QI efforts within the emergency department and results showed improvement in process outcomes. In summary, a longitudinal QI curriculum combining didactic and project-based learning in a pediatric emergency medicine fellowship was successful in increasing fellow comfort with QI tools and led to a successfully implemented collaborative improvement project.