The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) acknowledged the changing needs of physicians in training when it endorsed practice-based learning and improvement (PBLI) -- a competency that is typically omitted from medical curriculum. The goal is to have residents competent to investigate and evaluate their own patient care practices, integrate scientific evidence and be able to improve their practices. Available assessment tools do not adequately address all of the components of PBLI and few assessment tools attempt to capture the residents' ability to develop and implement clinically-based Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) projects that involve the practice setting. Curriculums without such foci miss the importance of system perspectives and opportunities for interprofessional team development. Our aim is to evaluate preliminary data on the curriculum we developed to address the gaps, to develop an assessment tool, and to provide methods for assessing the sustainability of system projects.

The key component of the curriculum is the integration of system quality improvement projects. PBLI curriculum was offered on alternate rotations. Preliminary data is available from 6 PBLI QI Systems Curriculum blocks (n=50) and 5 comparison blocks (n=42). Data includes closed- and open-ended questions designed to assess resident PBLI application skills, the notes and presentation slides for the residents' presentation.

Physicians in training operate in complex healthcare delivery systems but many have not been equipped with the knowledge or skills to analyze clinical environments and continually improve patient care.[1] Instead, their training emphasizes the clinical management of individual patients. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) acknowledged the changing needs of physicians in training when it endorsed one of two novel core competencies that are typically omitted from formal medical curriculum: practice-based learning and improvement (PBLI).[2,3] The ACGME's PBLI competency involves six points. The overall objective is to have residents competent to investigate and evaluate their own patient care practices, evaluate and integrate scientific evidence into their clinics and be able to improve their practices. However, the ACGME was not prescriptive about how to successfully implement and evaluate PBLI, and an established curriculum and validated assessment tool did not exist.[4] Efforts to date to develop an assessment tool provide a foundation, but none adequately addresses all of the components of PBLI as described by the ACGME. [3, 5-10] In particular, few assessment tools attempt to capture the residents' ability to develop and implement clinically-based CQI projects that involve the practice setting and assess impact on the practice setting and/or organization. Curriculums without such foci miss the importance of system perspectives, opportunities for interprofessional team development, and meaningful impacts on patient care at a broader organizational level.

After several iterations, a PBLI QI curriculum that addressed the gaps identified in many other curriculums was instituted. [11] The key component was the integration of system quality improvement projects that could evolve over several resident outpatient rotation blocks. Data from 11 blocks of the new curriculum is available for analysis. Data includes closed- and open-ended questions designed to assess resident PBLI application skills and the notes and presentation slides for the residents' presentation at the internal medicine's morbidity and mortality conference (IM MMC) at the end of each block. Funding would make it possible to more quickly evaluate the existing preliminary data. Our overall aim is to evaluate the preliminary data on the new curriculum and develop an assessment tool that addresses the six ACGME points and provides methods for assessing the sustainability of system projects. The next step will be to apply for a grant to more fully evaluate the curriculum and assessment tool.

Inclusion Criteria:

• None, data being used has already been collected from a previous study which the inclusion criteria included all Internal Medicine and Medicine-Pediatrics residents completing a 4 week ambulatory block from 2005-2006 were required to participate in the PBLI curriculum to satisfy an ACGME's core competency.

Exclusion Criteria:

• None, the residents from 2004 that did not complete a 4 week ambulatory block and residents participating in ambulatory block 7 and 13 were excluded from the study previously Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved and exempted study. Blocks 7 and 13 are not structured to permit teaching.

Internal Medicine residents

No descriptive information was collected from subjects.

While necessary limitations for initial assessment tool development, concerns will be addressed in the multi-site trial of the curriculum, including assessment of the training manual and codebooks that were developed during this project.