G. Leya1,5, C. N. Li4,5, E. Mort3,5, E. Aaronson2,5, R. M. Gartland1,5 1Massachusetts General Hospital, Surgery, Boston, MA, USA 2Massachusetts General Hospital, Emergency Medicine, Boston, MA, USA 3Massachusetts General Hospital, Medicine, Boston, MA, USA 4Children’s Hospital Boston, Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Boston, MA, USA 5Massachusetts General Hospital, Edward P. Lawrence Center For Quality And Safety, Boston, MA, USA
Introduction: Surgeons are increasingly asked to assume quality and safety (Q&S) leadership roles and start these roles with varying degrees of prior experience. While there are several Q&S training programs and advanced degrees designed for students and trainees, there are limited examples of relevant and digestible “on-the-job” Q&S onboarding training for physician leaders.
Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews with existing physician Q&S leaders to identify topics that they felt were important to succeed in their roles and to assess their perceived ideal training structure. Interview responses were analyzed using two-step rapid analysis. Learnings from these interviews were combined with core competencies from the literature and institution-specific Q&S leader roles and responsibilities to develop a two-day onboarding training and complementary digital resource repository. Attendees were surveyed to understand familiarity with core topics and perceptions of the training.
Results: Thirteen semi-structured interviews with physician leaders from six academic medical centers demonstrated that 61.5% had no formal Q&S training prior to assuming their leadership role. Respondents identified a range of knowledge gaps when starting their roles including basic process improvement, adverse event management, and leadership skills such as consensus building. A two-day virtual onboarding training was creating featuring six core safety-related topics and six core quality-related topics; a complementary digital repository was created featuring multimedia resources. Surveys of onboarding retreat participants demonstrated that 96% (73/76) of respondents believed the training would be “extremely” or “moderately” helpful to others in similar roles. Subject-matter familiarity across all content areas improved after the training. 90.8% (69/76) of respondents reported they were “extremely” or “moderately” likely to use resources from the digital resource repository.
Conclusion: Future work includes ongoing incorporation of this curriculum into physician Q&S leader onboarding, iterative improvement, and sharing the model with peer institutions looking to onboard similar leaders.
