In addition to providing a structured educational program to allow trainees to achieve the goal of becoming competent clinical endocrinologists, the program takes pride in the following achievements:
The program has been able to integrate patient safety and quality improvement activities into the curriculum on several levels. As participants in the weekly system-wide medication errors committee, the fellows are cognizant of insulin errors in the hospital and the multilayered systematic approach needed to prevent such errors. Awareness of the need for a systems-based approach has been applied in several of our MM & I conferences – fellows choose the topics based on observed incidents or near misses. The fellow and faculty mentor include all stakeholders in the analysis of the problem, develop an approach for improvement, and assess the outcome. Several of these experiences have triggered patient safety scholarly activity.
The Diabetes Transformation Project is an endocrinology division initiative funded by an RK Mellon Foundation grant. It is a unique multidisciplinary patient-centric care model involving pharmacists, diabetes educators, behavioral health specialists, and social work team members. The target population is high risk patients with diabetes. Fellows participate in the program during the Diabetes rotation. This offers firsthand experience in team-based care and measurement of population health outcomes.
The scheduling of all academic activities in a half-day session has allowed excellent attendance and participation by faculty. These sessions promote a collegial work environment which allows the fellows to observe faculty role-modeling therapeutic professional relationships, intellectual curiosity, and the personal satisfaction gained by ongoing adult learning applied to the intellectual rigors of the practice of endocrinology.
