Involving medical students in service improvement: evaluation of a student-led, extracurricular, multidisciplinary quality improvement initiative

Abstract

Background

Quality improvement (QI) is considered a duty of every doctor and, as such, it is fundamental that medical schools nurture QI skills of medical students. At a London medical school, a novel initiative was designed to involve medical students in QI. Such novel aspects include its student leadership, multidisciplinary approach and extra-curricular nature. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the initiative, and thus add to the experiences of existing medical student QI programs, as well as provide guidance to other institutions wishing to involve medical students in QI.

Methods

The key features of the initiative’s design is described. Its effectiveness was evaluated by the collection of retrospective data on the quality of the initiative’s QI projects (QIPs), including the proportion which: 1) reached completion; 2) resulted in a significant improvement in their primary outcome; 3) had sustained results at follow-up; 4) achieved publication; and 5) contributed towards a prize or conference presentation.

Results

There were 109 students involved throughout 10 projects from 14 different undergraduate and postgraduate courses from 2015–2019. 50% of the initiative’s projects achieved a significant improvement in their primary outcome, and the proportion of projects which sustained these improvements at follow-up was 100%. Furthermore, 20% of projects were published, and 60% contributed towards a prize or conference presentation.

Conclusion

The results of this study show that the initiative was effective at involving medical students in QI. As such, other groups establishing medical student QI programs may benefit from replicating positive elements of its design and operation.

Keywords:

• quality improvement
• clinical leadership
• medical education

Data sharing statement

All data for the study have been provided in the main manuscript or the online supplementary materials.

Ethical Approval

No ethical approval was required for this analysis. All individual research projects described obtained ethical approval.

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank all students from BTC UCL who have been the driving force behind our initiative and turned one student’s silly ambitious dream into a sustainable, respected and one of the largest multidisciplinary organization at UCL. More information on our initiative available at http://btc-ucl.com/. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.