Sitting in the airport after a successful week in Telluride, it is difficult not to reflect on where to go from here with regard to taking what we learned during the Roundtable and applying it to our home institutions. So many wonderful and innovative ideas for moving forward were shared on the last day, including ways to grow IHI chapters, methods of addressing patient safety and quality improvement with attending physicians, and developing student reporting tools, only to name a few. It was great to see so many students excited about returning home to spread the word and improve their systems, and I certainly share in that enthusiasm.
A few things that especially struck me most during the week were students’ lack of knowledge about the role of their nursing counterparts in the care of patients as well as the lack of “just” reporting tools for medical students nationwide. It would be great to see an effort to expand the education of medical students to include inter-disciplinary seminars, modules, and simulations in order to help medical, nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy, and social work students understand everyone’s role in the patient driven model of care. Additionally, I particularly appreciated Dr. Mayer’s idea of forcing a culture change around medical students’ ability to report incidents that jeopardize patients’ safety. As he put it, it would be great to see the culture change from “how/should I report” to “where do I report” a violation.
Thanks so much to everyone for a wonderful week and I look forward to hearing about changes that everyone helps bring about in the year to come!