2021 Quality Improvement Symposium

2022 Unified Quality Improvement Symposium- Award Winners Announced

The sixth annual Unified Quality Improvement Symposium was held virtually on Feb. 2, 2022. The symposium featured 23 projects related to quality improvement, patient safety, population health and interprofessional practice from ECU and Vidant Health.

Nearly 130 participants attended the virtual symposium, during which academic and community physicians, health professionals, health care teams, residents, fellows and students had the opportunity to present their work in systems improvement and practice redesign to an audience of peers and health system leaders.

Dr. Michael Waldrum, dean of the Brody School of Medicine and CEO of Vidant Health, set the tone for the day during his opening remarks when he stated, “Quality is about caring, and caring is about love.”

Accepted presentations were divided into four categories: podium, quick shot podium, poster and works-in-progress poster presentations. The symposium’s award for outstanding podium presentation was a tie between Gary Allen, third year medical student, LINC Scholar, for his presentation, “Increasing Reconciliation of Outside Clinical Information during Hospitalizations at Vidant Health Hospitals,” and Erin Pearson, RN, for her presentation, “For the Love of the Line CLABSI Reduction Project.” The quick shot podium award went to Tejal Naik, fourth year medical student, LINC Scholar, for her project, “Improving Self-Management of Healthy Weight Related Goals at the Pediatric Healthy Weight Clinic.” Kiane Douglas, third year medical student, LINC Scholar, received the outstanding poster award for her presentation, “A QI Project to Decrease Suboptimal Patient Transfers from the NICU to the Special Care Nursery.”

The symposium offered two concurrent learning sessions:

• “3 out of 4 People Do Not Like Math: Stats and Data Mining for the Rest of Us—How to Tell a Story with your Data to Drive Improvement.”— Dr. Amy Campbell, Nurse Specialist III at Vidant Health, offered techniques to better tell a story with data to drive performance
• “Systems Thinking in Healthcare Delivery” — Dr. Jed Gonzalo, professor of Medicine and Public Health and associate dean for Health Systems Education at Penn State College of Medicine, led participants in exploring the concept of systems thinking and examining the habits of a “systems thinker.”

Symposium Objectives

At the end of this symposium, participants will be able to:

1. Explain the quality improvement process as illustrated through inpatient, acute care, ambulatory practice and interprofessional improvement projects.
2. Describe how the quality improvement process can impact clinical care and system’s based practice.
3. Provide a platform for participants to describe how they would change rules, habits, policies, or procedures to improve care delivery.