2011 John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Awards. The effect of a novel Housestaff Quality Council on quality and patient safety. Innovation in patient safety and quality at the local level.

Background: In 2008 New York-Presbyterian Hospital (NYP)/Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York City, the largest not-for-profit, nonsectarian hospital in the United States, created and implemented a novel approach--the Housestaff Quality Council (HQC)--to engaging house-staff in quality and patient safety activities.

Methods: The HQC represented an innovative collaboration between the housestaff, the Department of Anesthesiology, the Division of Quality and Patient Safety, the Office of Graduate Medical Education, and senior leadership. As key managers of patient care, the housestaff sought to become involved in the quality and patient safety decision- and policy-making processes at the hospital.

Ten years after the IOM report: Engaging residents in quality and patient safety by creating a House Staff Quality Council.

Ten years after the 1999 Institute of Medicine report, it is clear that despite significant progress, much remains to be done to improve quality and patient safety (QPS). Recognizing the critical role of postgraduate trainees, an innovative approach was developed at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical Center to engage residents in QPS by creating a Housestaff Quality Council (HQC). HQC leaders and representatives from each clinical department communicate and partner regularly with hospital administration and other key departments to address interdisciplinary quality improvement (QI).

The role of housestaff in implementing medication reconciliation on admission at an academic medical center.

Since 2006, the Joint Commission has required all hospitals to have a process in place for medication reconciliation (MR). Although it has been shown that MR decreases medical errors, achieving compliance has proven difficult for many health care institutions. This article describes a housestaff-championed intervention of a "hard stop" for on-admission MR orders that led to a statistically significant increase in compliance that was sustained at 6 months after intervention.

A multidimensional integrative medicine intervention to improve cardiovascular risk.

Background: Integrative medicine is an individualized, patient-centered approach to health, combining a whole-person model with evidence-based medicine. Interventions based in integrative medicine theory have not been tested as cardiovascular risk-reduction strategies. Our objective was to determine whether personalized health planning (PHP), an intervention based on the theories and principles underlying integrative medicine, reduces 10-year risk of coronary heart disease (CHD).