IRDR Quality Impr Hero

Quality Improvement

The ACGME requires programs to educate residents and facilitate competence in systems based practice, and these skills are also required for continuing certification. Our department has created a resident specific Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Program, which includes a didactic curriculum, and mentorship with faculty and peers on resident led PQI projects. This program has been a success with numerous projects presented at national meetings and published in peer-review journals. Quality improvement projects are a great way for residents to evaluate different aspects of the program and department working to make them better. Although one project is required for graduation, many of our residents collaborate with faculty to complete multiple projects resulting in positive change.

Another important responsibility of the committee is the collection and preparation of quality assurance data.  As a program with overnight independent resident call, we carefully track data on resident preliminary reads afterhours.  We have a bimonthly quality assurance conference where afterhours cases that were considered near misses, misses or great calls by the over-reading faculty are presented in a de-identified manner to teach key teaching points.  These teaching points range from minor tweaks in common search patterns to the discussion of “can’t miss” diagnoses.  This is always well-received by our residents, as it is an open and de-identified environment to freely learn from other resident’s experiences and grow in the process.

Two resident representatives are selected to serve on this committee each year. An overview of the MUSC Quality Initiative Program was published in Academic Radiology to serve as a model for other institutions. A graduation track is available in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement for interested residents.