Using student-staff partnership to teach early years medical students about quality improvement: an evaluation
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Goldwater Breheny, Cate
O'Connell, Eve
Edwards, Lisa Jayne
Ryan, Noreen
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Background
Quality Improvement (QI) skills are recognized as a key outcome for medical students but are still rarely taught at the undergraduate level. Whilst there is evidence that preclinical students enjoy learning about QI, there is limited practical work exploring the best way to teach QI to this cohort. There are gaps in the literature around the evaluation of student-staff partnership approaches in the context of teaching QI, especially in line with the sustainable QI (susQI) framework. Our study evaluates a worksheet-based interactive session developed through student-staff partnership. The session was delivered to year one medical students in January 2024 at Imperial College School of Medicine (ICSM).
Methods
An inductive approach to thematic analysis was used to review worksheet content submitted by students during the teaching session. This method was employed to determine the session’s effectiveness and ascertain common themes of interest and application. 16 groups comprising 69 total students submitted worksheets for analysis.
Results
Three themes were identified: Making QI personal: learners chose to focus on improving their university experience over clinical projects, which affected how they identified stakeholders and designed their QI interventions; Misinterpretation of technical language: learners used their everyday understanding of QI terminology in the worksheets, evidencing some misconceptions; Understanding QI as a process: learners reported understanding and engaging with QI as a process and set of skills. Overall, students demonstrated both their understanding and application of QI methodology through engagement with the worksheet-based tasks.
Conclusions
Student-staff partnership is a feasible tool to develop and deliver an engaging and effective teaching session on QI, in line with susQI principles, for students with limited clinical experience. Further evaluation and use of partnership approaches in developing QI teaching and curricula are welcome and will likely deliver positive outcomes for learners.
Quality Improvement (QI) skills are recognized as a key outcome for medical students but are still rarely taught at the undergraduate level. Whilst there is evidence that preclinical students enjoy learning about QI, there is limited practical work exploring the best way to teach QI to this cohort. There are gaps in the literature around the evaluation of student-staff partnership approaches in the context of teaching QI, especially in line with the sustainable QI (susQI) framework. Our study evaluates a worksheet-based interactive session developed through student-staff partnership. The session was delivered to year one medical students in January 2024 at Imperial College School of Medicine (ICSM).
Methods
An inductive approach to thematic analysis was used to review worksheet content submitted by students during the teaching session. This method was employed to determine the session’s effectiveness and ascertain common themes of interest and application. 16 groups comprising 69 total students submitted worksheets for analysis.
Results
Three themes were identified: Making QI personal: learners chose to focus on improving their university experience over clinical projects, which affected how they identified stakeholders and designed their QI interventions; Misinterpretation of technical language: learners used their everyday understanding of QI terminology in the worksheets, evidencing some misconceptions; Understanding QI as a process: learners reported understanding and engaging with QI as a process and set of skills. Overall, students demonstrated both their understanding and application of QI methodology through engagement with the worksheet-based tasks.
Conclusions
Student-staff partnership is a feasible tool to develop and deliver an engaging and effective teaching session on QI, in line with susQI principles, for students with limited clinical experience. Further evaluation and use of partnership approaches in developing QI teaching and curricula are welcome and will likely deliver positive outcomes for learners.
Date Issued
2025-02-18
Date Acceptance
2025-01-29
Citation
BMC Medical Education, 2025, 25
ISSN
1472-6920
Publisher
BMC
Journal / Book Title
BMC Medical Education
Volume
25
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
10.1186/s12909-025-06779-7
Subjects
Medical education
Quality improvement
Qualitative research
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
263
Date Publish Online
2025-02-18