Performance improvement in internal medicine residency education: Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island curriculum.

With the growing emphasis on patient outcomes and quality improvement within the United States healthcare system, medical schools and postgraduate training programs have been developing curricula to educate physicians in these areas.1,2 Internists must now demonstrate incorporation of quality improvement into their practices for American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) recertification. However, most physicians have not had formalized training in this aspect of performance. To address this need, the Internal Medicine Residency Program at Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island (MHRI)/Warren Alpert School of Medicine of Brown University developed a quality improvement curriculum. Our practical, “hands-on” performance improvement (PI) curriculum addresses three of the six areas of professional competency defined by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Outcomes Project: Patient Care, Systems-Based Practice (SBP), and Practice-Based Learning and Improvement (PBLI).3 As of July 2009, the ACGME has mandated that all Internal Medicine residency training programs involve trainees in performance improvement projects and develop formalized curricula.