Practice-based learning innovation: The venous thromboembolism quality improvement resource room

✍ Scribed by Jason Stein; Sylvia C. W. McKean; Greg Maynard; Tina Budnitz; Alpesh Amin

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 31 KB
• Volume: 1
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1553-5592
• DOI: 10.1002/jhm.117

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

BACKGROUND

Hospitalists are seen as the logical choice to lead and teach systems‐based initiatives to improve the quality of inpatient care. The educational strategy of the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) includes development of resources to support hospitalist leadership and teaching of inpatient care delivery and improvement.

PURPOSE

To develop a resource to present quality improvement (QI) principles and systems‐level approaches for practice‐based learning and to support empiric, iterative efforts to improve inpatient medical, cost, and service outcomes.

DESCRIPTION

The SHM defined the role of the hospitalist in QI, performed an assessment of the educational needs of hospitalists, and executed a web‐based educational strategy to address those needs. The organization identified the most common cause of preventable inpatient deaths, hospital‐acquired venous thromboembolism (VTE), and prioritized the need to improve prophylaxis.

RESULTS

This new resource at the SHM web site presents principles for conducting QI in the hospital while focusing on an important clinical topic. To facilitate learning that is practice‐based, the VTE Quality Improvement Resource Room features an interactive “Ask the Expert” discussion community and a novel “Improvement Workbook,” a downloadable project outline and tutorial that hospitalists can use to guide and document steps in an effort aimed at reducing hospital‐acquired VTE. Focus group feedback will refine the Quality Improvement Resource Room template and content so subsequent offerings can offer a measurably better learning experience and target other significant inpatient problems. Additional research is needed to evaluate learning and the clinical impact of this resource.