An experiential interdisciplinary quality improvement education initiative

Seven learners, including 2 preventive medicine fellows, 2 family medicine residents, 1 internal medicine resident, and 2 master's-level nursing students participated in an experiential 4-week quality improvement rotation at a major academic medical center. Together they worked on a quality improvement project that resulted in enhanced medication reconciliation in a preventive medicine clinic. Learner knowledge measured on the QI Knowledge Application Tool increased from an average of 2.33 before the start of the rotation to 3.43 (P =.043) by the end of the rotation. At the conclusion, all learners said they were confident or very confident that they could make a change to improve health care in a local setting. Although this pilot supports the feasibility and potential benefits of interdisciplinary quality improvement education, further research is necessary to explore strategies to implement the same on a larger scale, and to examine the impact on patient outcomes.