TY - JOUR T1 - Demonstrating the value of postgraduate fellowships for physicians in quality improvement and patient safety JF - BMJ Quality & Safety JO - BMJ Qual Saf SP - 645 LP - 654 DO - 10.1136/bmjqs-2019-010204 VL - 29 IS - 8 AU - Jennifer S Myers AU - Meghan Brooks Lane-Fall AU - Ross H Perfetti AU - Kate Humphrey AU - Luke Sato AU - Kathy N Shaw AU - April M Taylor AU - Anjala Tess Y1 - 2020/08/01 UR - http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/29/8/645.abstract N2 - Background Academic fellowships in quality improvement (QI) and patient safety (PS) have emerged as one strategy to fill a need for physicians who possess this expertise. The authors aimed to characterise the impact of two such programmes on the graduates and their value to the institutions in which they are housed.Methods In 2018, a qualitative study of two US QIPS postgraduate fellowship programmes was conducted. Graduates’ demographics and titles were collected from programme files,while perspectives of the graduates and their institutional mentors were collected through individual interviews and analysed using thematic analysis.Results Twenty-eight out of 31 graduates (90%) and 16 out of 17 (94%) mentors participated in the study across both institutions. At a median of 3 years (IQR 2–4) postgraduation, QIPS fellowship programme graduates’ effort distribution was: 50% clinical care (IQR 30–61.8), 48% QIPS administration (IQR 20–60), 28% QIPS research (IQR 17.5–50) and 15% education (7.1–30.4). 68% of graduates were hired in the health system where they trained. Graduates described learning the requisite hard and soft skills to succeed in QIPS roles. Mentors described the impact of the programme on patient outcomes and increasing the acceptability of the field within academic medicine culture.Conclusion Graduates from two QIPS fellowship programmes and their mentors perceive programmatic benefits related to individual career goal attainment and institutional impact. The results and conceptual framework presented here may be useful to other academic medical centres seeking to develop fellowships for advanced physician training programmes in QIPS.Data are available upon reasonable request. ER -