Practice Improvement Modules

Background

For this rotation, residents will complete a variation of the practice improvement modules (PIMs) that have been advocated by APDIM and the ABIM to address systems-based practice and practice-based learning and improvement.

“Residency and fellowship programs have the opportunity to address proficiency with two ACGME competencies – systems-based practice and practice-based learning and improvement – by using the ABIM PIM Practice Improvement Module (PIM). These interactive educational tools allow faculty members, residents and fellows to analyze and evaluate practice performance to improve the quality of their patient care.“
    - http://www.abim.org/residency/residency.aspx

More information about PIMs (the first PowerPoint, "An overview of the structure of PIMs", is very helpful)

1. Identifying priority areas for clinical improvement at your hospital or clinic

At present, you may choose any area of interest to you. If you want to increase the chance that your area is high priority, and thus more likely to be acted upon by your institution, click here.

2. Best clinical practice

Click here for more information on executing the literature search and creating the evidence table and forest plot.

3. Implementation

To learn more about implementation using informatics and critical pathways, click here.

4. Monitoring the impact of the intervention

This section is not developed and not a requirement currently.

Final products

• Evidence synthesis, with references to source articles, displayed on a public wiki (information on editting wikis):
  • Evidence table (if appropriate)
  • Forest plot (if appropriate)
  • One paragraph summary
• Written summary of the month that contains
  • Abstract
  • Background
    • Suggestion on organizing text of short background section (see Table 1 from Welch et al.).
  • Evidence synthesis
    • Literature search
      • Systematic review starting with search of citations using UpToDate, PIER, SUMSearch, other
      • Meta-narrative to capture any addition 'story-lines' using HighWire and ISI
    • Evidence summary. Give bulleted summary with links to details at Citizendium
  • Results
    • Efforts to implement locally and status of the efforts at the end of the month
    • Recommendations for future implementations
• How what I learned might effect my future practice