Bridging Health Equity, Quality Improvement, and Patient Safety: A Framework for Medical Student Education

Abstract

Background

Ensuring patient safety (PS) and implementing quality improvement (QI) are well-recognized functions of healthcare delivery systems and fall within physicians' scope of practice. How to effectively introduce equity-centered PS and QI concepts into an already overloaded undergraduate medical education curriculum is a challenge.

Methods

This report describes our experiences at the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine (KPSOM), a new medical school, and how we have developed our Quality Improvement and Patient Safety curriculum within a larger institutional environment where equity and social justice are highly valued.

Results

Integrating health systems science into undergraduate medical education and concepts related to health equity requires intentional curricular design and ongoing adaptation. Lessons learned include: (1) importance of using the Basic Improvement Framework as an educational anchor; (2) understanding the value of integration across curricular phases; and (3) creating a dedicated space for curricular refinement over time.

Conclusions

Medical schools and health systems aiming to strengthen their health systems science curricula may find value in implementing structured approaches—such as the Basic Improvement Framework utilized at KPSOM—to promote early and meaningful engagement with systems-based concepts, especially health equity, throughout learners’ training.