Resident Quality Council

Baystate Health's Resident Quality Council is an interprofessional, interdisciplinary council focused on learning and disseminating quality improvement science through exploration of clinical care of our patients.

Incorporating Quality Science in Residency Education

Residents play a key role in patient care at academic medical centers. As trainees, they spend many hours in the hospital and have unique insights into problems that occur there. Our Resident Quality Council (RQC) was developed in 2011 to engage all resident programs in quality improvement with the aim of improving patient care, safety, and inter-disciplinary collaboration.

The ACGME recognizes the importance of quality improvement science by requiring programs to incorporate the competency of "establishing systematically analyze practice using quality improvement methods, and implement changes with the goal of practice improvement" into their curricula.

Why Join the Resident Quality Council?

There are many advantages of being an RQC member:

Learning about quality improvement science and being able to practically apply it to patient care
Becoming a QI champion for your residency program
Working on QI projects—individually or collaboratively—with mentorship and guidance throughout implementation
Networking with other residents and professionals
Building your CV and becoming more marketable

Who is Eligible?

Any resident in good academic standing within their department who is interested in learning about, and being actively engaged in, quality improvement science and patient safety may submit an application for membership. Fellows and faculty may also apply to join the RQC.

Mission and Objectives

Mission

The Residents Quality Council aims to improve patient care and safety by:

engaging residents in a culture of quality improvement
enhancing communication between hospital administrators and clinical departments
providing a vehicle to survey house staff attitudes and behaviors related to patient safety and to encourage best practices

Objectives

Increase resident knowledge in quality improvement methods and tools
Improve resident engagement in QI
Encourage and promote development of quality improvement/patient safety projects within the residency programs
Be a repository of resident initiated QI/patient safety initiatives and research
Promote sharing of quality improvement projects and outcomes between residency programs
Foster interprofessional collaboration among residents
Support residents who wish to initiate QI projects/research

Meetings and Projects

The Resident Quality Council meets on the third Monday of every month from 5:00 - 6:30 pm.

Each academic year, the initial meeting is an informational meeting with the group.

Subsequent meetings are used to discuss specific cases that are brought to the council with potential misses/errors/questions, etc. These cases are generated from SRS reports, the numerous peer review committees in the hospital, and by submission from residents or ancillary staff.

Through analytic discussion of the cases, the tools of quality improvement will be introduced and discussed.
There will be potential projects and areas for improvement highlighted through the review of these cases. Council members who are interested in conducting QI projects will be encouraged and coached, and advised on potential collaboration with other departments.

Previous projects the RQC has worked on include standardizing consultant communication, and increasing residency utilization and understanding of safety error reporting.