Survey of Housestaff Attitudes Toward Patient Care and Safety

Background: The occurrence of medical errors and their deleterious effects on quality of care delivered are widely recognized phenomena in healthcare today. This has spurned an aggressive nationwide campaign to improve the quality of care all hospitals throughout the country. Currently, there are numerous reports of quality improvement initiatives across medical centers in the United States. However, a review of the literature failed to identify any publications regarding targeted resident/housestaff involvement in hospital quality improvement and safety related activities.

Purpose: To investigate and track housestaff attitudes on patient care, patient safety, communication and overall quality within the institution.

Objective: To investigate, analyze and publish the results of this prospective study. The information obtained will help us and others understand whether proactive attempts to change housestaff culture can indeed change attitudes towards the better with regards to patient care and safety. It is assumed that improved attitudes ultimately translates into improved care and safety.

Methods: Each residency coordinator in each clinical department will be asked to distribute a survey, which has already been validated for this type of investigation, to each resident in the respective program (see attachment).

The Vice-President of Medical Affairs will provide a cover letter to help with the process. After a week, a reminder will be distributed by the coordinators to each resident asking them to fill out the survey. The surveys will be filled out anonymously. However, each participant will be asked to note their sex, department and year of postgraduate training. This process will be repeated every eight months until June of 2010. The Housestaff Quality council (HQC) has already distributed and collected this survey. The results of those surveys will be used in a retrospective part of this study. The results of (HQC) survey will be used to establish a baseline of the housestaff attitudes at the New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell.

Data will be stored on a password protected computer. The Institutional Review Board (IRB), Office of Human Research Protection and Food and Drug Administration and all appropriate federal oversight agencies may have access to those files.