The Division of General Internal Medicine has a core group of individuals who are interested and trained in quality improvement. Drs Laurence Green, Dev Jayaraman and Emily McDonald (McGill University Health Centre) and Dr Blair Schwartz (Jewish General Hospital) run Quality Improvement projects with the mission to promote, support and coordinate new or ongoing quality improvement initiatives.
From left to right: Dr Laurence Green, Dr Emily McDonald and Dr Blair Schwartz
Objectives:
- Provide leadership in planning, implementing and studying initiatives in General Internal Medicine
- Conduct and support research in patient safety and health care quality improvement
- Establish a central repository of quality improvement projects and data in General Internal Medicine
- Act as a resource group for quality improvement innovations in the McGill system
- Collaborate with other divisions in the McGill system as well as external institutions
- Teach quality improvement principles by engaging residents in projects
- Publish and publicize results
Current Projects:
- Catheter-associated urinary tract infections
- Inappropriate antibiotic use
- A ward-based Medical Emergency Team to improve outcomes for unstable patients on medical wards
- Reduce inappropriate proton pump inhibitor use
- Evaluate the predictability and reasons for hospital re-admissions
- Assess factors that influence end-of-life care on medical wards (multi-centre Canadian study)
- Assess quality of treatment of hyponatremia (in collaboration with the University of Toronto)
The CQI plans to establish a database in the outpatient clinics to assess quality of care provided in the clinics.
View Dr Green's publications on PubMed
View Dr Schwartz's publications on PubMed
The MedSafer Project
Based at the MUHC, Dr Todd Lee, Infectious Diseases, and Dr Emily McDonald run the MedSafer Project. MedSafer brings together clinician researchers with strong scientific and clinical backgrounds in Geriatric Medicine, Internal Medicine and Geriatric Pharmacotherapy from 11 sites at 7 institutions across Canada to facilitate safer prescribing to older adults.
Visit the MedSafer website here.
View Dr McDonald's publications on PubMed