The next phase in patient safety education: Towards a standardized, tools-based pathology patient safety curriculum: A call to action from the Association of Pathology Chairs' Residency Program Directors Section Training Residents in Patient Safety Workgroup

Cynthia K Harris; Yigu Chen; Erin L Alston; Ali Brown; Devon Chabot-Richards; Suzanne M Dintzis; Mark L Graber; Ronald Jackups Jr; Lesley C Lomo; Jennifer Laudadio; Priscilla S Markwood; Kaitlyn J Nielson; Von Samedi; Barbara Sampson; Richard L Haspel; Nadeem Zafar; Kathleen T Montone; John Childs; Kristie L White; Yael K Heher

doi:10.1016/j.acpath.2023.100081

The next phase in patient safety education: Towards a standardized, tools-based pathology patient safety curriculum: A call to action from the Association of Pathology Chairs' Residency Program Directors Section Training Residents in Patient Safety Workgroup

Acad Pathol. 2023 Jun 2;10(2):100081. doi: 10.1016/j.acpath.2023.100081. eCollection 2023 Apr-Jun.

Authors

Cynthia K Harris^{1

2}, Yigu Chen³, Erin L Alston⁴, Ali Brown⁵, Devon Chabot-Richards⁶, Suzanne M Dintzis⁷, Mark L Graber⁸, Ronald Jackups Jr⁹, Lesley C Lomo¹⁰, Jennifer Laudadio¹¹, Priscilla S Markwood¹², Kaitlyn J Nielson¹³, Von Samedi¹⁴, Barbara Sampson¹⁵, Richard L Haspel¹⁶, Nadeem Zafar⁷, Kathleen T Montone¹⁷, John Childs¹⁸, Kristie L White¹⁹, Yael K Heher¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
² The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner, New York, NY, USA.
³ Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA.
⁴ Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
⁵ American Society for Clinical Pathology, Chicago, IL, USA.
⁶ Department of Pathology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
⁷ Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
⁸ Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, Evanston, IL, USA.
⁹ Department of Pathology and Immunology, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO.
¹⁰ Department of Pathology, University of Utah Health, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
¹¹ Department of Pathology, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, USA.
¹² Association of Pathology Chairs, Wilmington, DE, USA.
¹³ Department of Pathology, Mayo Clinic Rochester, MN, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Pathology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Pathology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
¹⁶ Department of Pathology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA.
¹⁷ Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
¹⁸ Department of Pathology, Geisinger Medical Center, Danville, PA, USA.
¹⁹ Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Abstract

Patient safety education is a mandated Common Program Requirement of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in all medical residency and fellowship programs. Although many hospitals and healthcare environments have general patient safety education tools for trainees, few to none focus on the unique training milieu of pathologists, including a mix of highly automated and manual error-prone processes, frequent multiplicity of events, and lack of direct patient relationships for error disclosure. We established a national Association of Pathology Chairs-Program Directors Section Workgroup focused on patient safety education for pathology trainees entitled Training Residents in Patient Safety (TRIPS). TRIPS included diverse representatives from across the United States, as well as representatives from pathology organizations including the American Board of Pathology, the American Society for Clinical Pathology, the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, the College of American Pathologists, and the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine. Objectives of the workgroup included developing a standardized patient safety curriculum, designing teaching and assessment tools, and refining them with pilot sites. Here we report the establishment of TRIPS as well as data from national needs assessment of Program Directors across the country, who confirmed the need for a standardized patient safety curriculum.

Keywords: Curriculum; Medical education; Pathology education; Patient safety; Quality assurance; Root cause analysis.

Grants and funding

P30 CA008748/CA/NCI NIH HHS/United States