SAFE QI – a framework to overcome the challenges of implementing a quality improvement curriculum into a residency program

Quality improvement (QI) is an essential component of medical practice. Medical students and residents must learn the skills to conduct clinical QI during their educational programs. Medical educators must create and implement a curriculum in QI to empower their students to develop this skill and knowledge. However, developing and implementing a QI curriculum may be challenging for some residency programs. Residency programs with a relatively short duration of training – for example, only 2 years – may be unable to implement an extensive QI curriculum without siphoning away time for other learning objectives. Small residency programs may lack faculty with expertise to teach this topic. Residency programs with only a few residents may find it difficult to evaluate the success of a QI curriculum using robust statistical analysis. These residency programs need a QI curriculum with several features. The curriculum must be deliverable in a short period of time. There must be tools to assess the residents’ attainment of the curricular objectives. The curriculum must give the residents practical skills to develop their own QI initiatives. Finally, there must be simple methods to evaluate the curriculum’s effectiveness. To address these goals, we developed the SAFE QI (QI curriculum which is short, assessed, functional, and effective) framework for the 2-year subspecialty respirology residency program at the University of Alberta. There are 2–3 entrants per year for a total of 4–6 residents. This framework helps medical educators overcome the challenges of implementing a QI curriculum into their educational programs. This article illustrates how this framework was used to develop and deliver an institution’s own QI curriculum.