Background:
Leading healthcare improvement requires skills not often taught in undergraduate medical education (UME). While teaching quality and safety is required in resident education, inadequate emphasis exists in UME to ingrain skills needed to lead transformation of clinical systems. Targeting such content to UME students offers a key opportunity to accelerate mastery for future physicians.
Purpose:
The Health Innovations Scholars Program (HISP), an educational initiative at the University of Colorado (CU), positions pre‐clinical medical students to lead substantive systems change, thereby driving knowledge and skill acquisition early in their careers.
Description:
The HISP is a 5‐week immersion program focused on providing training in high‐value care and leadership. An integrated curriculum elucidates connections between clinical hospital medicine (HM) and the tenets of leadership, quality and safety, and operational efficiency. Concurrently, students develop and manage their own process improvement project, with intensive mentorship from HM faculty. The curriculum emphasizes opportunities for students to practice and develop skills for leading systems improvement. In 2013, six students were selected via a competitive application process from across the US, and partnered with CU’s Stroke Leadership Team to improve processes critical for safe, efficient, patient‐centered discharge. Their work produced four recommendations: standardized provider roles; enhanced discharge medication education through patient‐centered medication sheets distributed daily during hospitalization; scripted care coordination rounds to facilitate efficient and reliable communication between providers; and improved patient engagement using “Pathway to Home,” a visual tool to help patients understand what to expect throughout their hospital stay. Building on the work of the HISP students, the Stroke Leadership Team has fully implemented the first 3 recommendations and is actively pursuing the fourth. The students’ work earned them Practicum Certificates from the Institute of Healthcare Improvement. Table 1 captures program evaluation. Pre‐ and post‐course surveys revealed statistically significant improvement across all three subject areas and in the domains of knowledge and skills. Students remain engaged with program faculty via quarterly phone calls and social media to encourage scholarship, discussion of systems improvement literature, and mentorship.
Conclusions:
Experiential learning dedicated to developing future leaders can significantly impact skills acquisition of UME students. Students felt the HISP increased their knowledge, skills, and interest in the core tenets of HM.
