Over the summer, a cohort of five rising second-year medical students participated in a four-week pilot exposing them to quality improvement (QI) concepts as inaugural members of the Churchill Summer QI Research Fellows program.
The Office of Medical Education is always looking for faculty mentors to help support medical students’ scholarly involvement, and John Romond, MD, associate professor of medicine, and Emma Scott, MD, leader of the Health Systems Science Thread, answered the call by creating a pilot curriculum aimed at exposing preclinical medical students to QI concepts.
For many students, this pilot served as their first exposure to QI – a purposeful choice by program organizers to ensure that students could access this learning opportunity regardless of their level of prior knowledge. As part of the summer program, students rounded daily with academic medicine teams, collecting pre- and post- data for their quality improvement project. They also participated in bi-weekly hands-on workshops to apply QI skills to their project in real-time.
The program is designed to maximize students’ exposure to new skills. After completing their June data collection, the cohort developed an abstract, submitted it to a medical conference, and presented their data in an in-person poster session. Ultimately, the team received the research award for the poster at the Heartland Hospital Medicine conference in August.
“It is so important for our medical students to have opportunities to explore new interests to help inform their career choices and build their skillsets for residency and beyond,” shared Lillian Sims, PhD, acting director of medical student research.
“QI is an area where we know physicians both in academic and in private practice settings can really contribute to improving their patients’ experiences and their institution’s systems, so we are always looking for opportunities for our medical students to start learning about those efforts.”
Students shared their appreciation for the program and its facilitators at the end of the program, as excerpted below:
"I appreciated the way we were taught the most. It felt very conversational rather than us being lectured at. In many cases, we'd go over a topic, see examples, then apply what we went over by doing our own version for the project. I thought this was very helpful and was a great balance of letting us try things as we go but also holding our hands as we're learning how to do QI for the first time.”
“The attitudes of the preceptors were also much appreciated. They created a welcoming and low-stress environment where we felt comfortable asking for clarification and sharing our ideas."
"This was such a practical and meaningful way to get research and shadowing experience. Not only did I get to learn about the foundations of quality improvement, but I got to learn directly from different attendings and residents as well as other health care professionals. I got comfortable walking around the hospital."
"I really appreciated learning super applicable things outside of my normal M1 curriculum. I felt like I was able to learn skills for third and fourth year as an M1.”
"...going on rounds and seeing health care in action after first-year was incredibly valuable."
"This was an AWESOME experience with such an amazing balance of free time and work (that was honestly enjoyable). I can’t say enough good things about this program or our facilitators!"
