Thought Leadership & Innovation Foundation Innovates to Improve Surgical Training in Residency Programs across the U.S.

The Educational Quality Improvement Program (EQIP) is an innovation in surgical training programs by the Association of Program Directors in Surgery (APDS).

TLI Board Vice President Shawn Murphy co-authors article in the Journal of Surgical Education, EQIP’s First Year: A Step Closer to Higher Quality in Surgical Education.

A highly-secure, doubly-deidentified database was developed by Thought Leadership & Innovation Foundation (TLI) for the ingestion of resident and program data for the EQIP programs of APDS. Initially, 36 surgical training programs with 1,264 trainees and 1,500 faculty members were included in the dataset.

The APDS and TLI have proved the concept that a highly secure database for the purpose of continuous risk-adjusted quality improvement in surgical education can be successfully deployed.

John Ciolkosz, TLI data scientist and co-author, shares, “Using Google Data Studio, specific components of the submitted data were tabulated and categorized by program size (large, medium, and small) and type of program (university, university-affiliated, and independent). These basic descriptors allow EQIP participants to graphically compare their programs for the 46 different data elements collected by EQIP.”

This innovative program will allow surgical Program Directors to assess their programs to make necessary changes to improve surgical training with the ultimate goal of producing the highest quality surgeons. EQIP will allow data to inform training directors’ educational decisions to improve their programs.

Shawn Murphy elaborates, “This first year of data collection for EQIP showed that increased time in a technical skills lab and the presence of a formal teaching curriculum were associated with increased success on both the ABS's Qualifying and Certifying Examination. TLI’s mission revolves around innovative thinking on national issues relating to health to foster transformative change to improve the health and well-being of patient communities across the country. EQIP will help program directors advocate for their residents and their programs and hopefully improve the care their patients receive.”