Scholarly Activity and Quality Improvement

Scholarly activity is a part of the culture of our program. In order to prepare our residents to contribute to the scientific body of knowledge, we conduct an annual abstract workshop near the outset of the year for training on vignette and research abstract preparation as well as poster and oral presentations.

Our residents receive travel support from the Department of Medicine Trainee Scholarship Fund that was created in 2012 and is maintained through private donations from faculty, alumni, and commercial organizations. Over the last five years, this fund has sent over 100 of our trainees around the country, from San Francisco to Boston, to present their work at general medicine and subspecialty society meetings.

Resident Quality Improvement Projects

Our residents perform quality improvement (QI) projects in teams to enhance our inpatient and outpatient care. Each team produces an abstract ready for submission to local, regional or national meetings. Teams are competing for recognition for the project that is of the highest quality, and for a place in the next regional ACP Abstract Competition after completion hosted by the Mississippi chapter of ACP. Additionally, they will be working together to evaluate our handoff process, as well as our documentation in clinic and our documentation on daily notes, discharge summaries and nighttime evaluations. 

Here is a list of recent Quality Improvement Projects from our residents 2018-2024:

• Increasing the prescription rates of SGLT-2 inhibitors and GLP1RAs in the LB internal medicine clinic in the popluation that includes DMII, ASCVD or both.
• Reducing the burden of ineffective treatment of constipation in hospitalized adult patients. 
• Increasing the administration of the pneumococcal vaccine to asthmatics in the LB internal medicine resident clinic. 
• Templated insulin regimen sheets at discharge for improving adherence and understanding at 30 days.
• De-prescribing proton pump inhibitors in the Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology clinics.
• Standardization of discharge procedures to improve patient satisfaction.
• Implementing global longitudinal strain measurements in all echocardiograms performed pre and post chemotherapy.
• Template for surrogate decision makers to increase the number of surrogate designations in clinic.
• Development of protocol for standardization of penicillin de-sensitization evaluations for admission.
• Improving rates of immunization administration in immunocompromised patients followed in Rheumatology clinic.
• Determining whether Internal Medicine based Procedure Team has quicker intervention time with equal or decreased morbidity and mortality compared to Interventional Radiology.
• Improving patient satisfaction by reduction of nighttime interruptions
• Improving rates of ARNI prescription in patients with CHF NYHA classes II-IV already tolerating ACEi/ARB via EMR reminder.
• Increasing post-hospital follow up rates in patients admitted for heart failure.
• Using the Padua score to reduce the amount of inappropriate DVT prophylaxis.
• Improving delivery of discharge summaries to non-UMMC primary care providers.
• Improving resident communication via implementation of EMR based I-PASS system.