How to Teach Quality Improvement and Patient Safety

Abstract

When mistakes occur, we must take very opportunity to learn from them. As a relatively new and evolving focus in the field of medicine, many clinicians are still learning how to most effectively practice and teach quality improvement (QI) and patient safety (PS). The ACGME, under the competency of practice-based learning, expects residents to be able to systematically analyze practice using quality improvement methods, and implement changes with the goal of practice improvement. Therefore, students must be prepared to engage in these activities when they start their residency training. There is no better opportunity to do this than in the course of day-to-day patient care activities. This chapter presents strategies for teaching patient safety (PS) and quality improvement (QI) in the course of daily inpatient and outpatient clinical activities.