Quality and Patient Safety

Quality is the operating system through which our department delivers safe, effective, equitable, and innovative care. "Whole System Quality" is an integrated framework described by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and advocated by the UK’s National Health Service and other organizations. This model connects four essential domains — quality planning, quality assurance, quality control, and quality improvement — into a unified system to establish priorities with clear and measurable goals, mitigate risk, monitor performance, and drive meaningful change.

Establishing key focus areas based on the needs of our patients, teams, and other stakeholders. We strive to ensure that those focus areas are aligned with our departmental mission, vision, and values.

Strengthening systems that identify and respond to safety events, with an emphasis on prevention through deployment of thoughtful risk reduction strategies. Our department is a leader in the NewYork-Presbyterian Culture of Safety Initiative.

Continuous performance assessment to enable corrective action and to monitor for sustained gains after completing QI initiatives. This is accomplished through visual displays of measures for all staff, periodic individual performance feedback, team huddles, and clear escalation processes.

Initiatives designed to address key focus areas identified during quality planning. Projects should aspire to have clear aim statements and well-defined metrics. We use established tools and methodology to develop interventions that have the greatest likelihood of addressing underlying problems.

Explore each domain to learn more.

VITALS: Quality Dispatch

The Quality Dispatch is our quality and patient safety (QPS) companion to the departmental newsletter VITALS.  This communication helps us disseminate announcements, safety reminders and best practices, and project spotlights with an educational focus. It helps keep improvement work visible across our teams, promotes collaboration, and supports a strong culture of continuous learning across the department. Our quality champions contribute content to the newsletter and use VITALS: Quality Dispatch as a springboard for other scholarly activities.

Structured Education in Quality

Patient Safety Rotation

• All PGY-1 residents complete spend four weeks during their intern year focused on patient safety as an introduction to quality in healthcare
• Led by Dr. Brian Egan, this rotation features root cause analysis simulation, a focused QI project or literature review and summary related to a QPS topic, attendance at departmental and hospital quality reviews and meetings, and other elements.

Perioperative Quality and Patient Safety Pathway (new for the 2026/27 academic year)

Sponsored by the Center for Patient Safety Science, supported by the Education division and Quality team, this yearlong program will help PGY-2–4 anesthesiology and surgery residents develop the advanced skills and experience needed to be future leaders in quality and patient safety. We have eight participants in our inaugural cohort and we look forward to growing this program in future years.

Pathway Overview:

• 1:1 mentorship
• Integrated didactic and simulation/lab-based lecture series (with opportunity for faculty to audit and learn alongside trainees)
• Group capstone project
• Contribute to departmental and hospital QPS meetings and activities
• Engagement with hospital QPS leadership