Integrating Quality Into Medical School Curriculum: One Student’s Perspective

By Anne Press

The traditional medical school curriculum has a heavy scientific focus, especially in the first two years. In an already jam-packed curriculum, it can be difficult to replace any of the materials with improvement science. To combat this, Hofstra-North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine launched—with the school’s inaugural class in 2011—a four-year curriculum in patient safety, quality, and effectiveness. The following is an example of the impact this curriculum had on me, a student in that first class.

As I sat through a lecture on biochemical pathways and the pathology that can cause diseases like cystic fibrosis (CF), I was enthralled by the mechanisms of the human body. However, the human element of the disease was missing from the lecture. I was unable to take what I was learning and apply it to actual patients, in real-life settings, and understand how it affected their care.

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AMA and MedStar Health Partner to Improve EHR Usability

In an effort to promote transparency around how electronic health records (EHRs) are designed and user-tested, and drive improvements in clinician support and patient safety, the American Medical Association (AMA) and MedStar Health’s National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare have developed a comparative EHR User-Centered Design Evaluation Framework that reveals a lack of focus … Continued

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Quality Improvement

Process Improvements in the ED increase sepsis bundle compliance, reduce mortality Effectively treating any infection requires a certain measure of early identification and rapid response. Infections, by their nature, worsen over time, so hospitals with successful care processes that rapidly identify and treat infections often see the most success. Continue reading this article here. Integrating … Continued

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AHA Advisory Group Issues Report on Interoperability

In a report released in July, the American Hospital Association’s (AHA) Interoperability Advisory Group (IAG) calls on health systems and hospitals, developers and vendors of electronic devices and information systems, and government and regulatory agencies to work together to improve the interoperability of healthcare data. In Achieving Interoperability that Supports Care Transformation, the group observes … Continued

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Brain and Spine Surgery No More Risky When Physicians-In-Training Participate, Study Finds

Having residents—physicians in training—participate in surgery does not in itself increase a patient’s risk of postoperative complications or of dying within 30 days of the surgery, according to a recent study of more than 16,000 brain and spine surgeries. A report on the study appears in the April issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery. “Patients … Continued

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Root Cause Analysis: ‘We can do better.’

By Susan Carr Saying, “We can do better,” Jim Bagian declared that root cause analysis (RCA)—the subject of a new report by the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF)—offers uncommon potential to improve safety and that, in general, healthcare has not used it well and wasted opportunities to prevent future harm. Bagian and Doug Bonacum were … Continued

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