The Best of Both Worlds: Strengthening Medical Education Research and Evaluation Using Quality Improvement.

In 2016, pediatric hospital medicine was recognized as a subspecialty by the American Board of Medical Specialties, with emphasis on the roles of hospitalists as educators and experts in systems-based improvement.1–3 Nationally, pediatric hospitalists have diverse nonclinical professional responsibilities, with medical education and quality improvement (QI) being the most common.4,5 An underrecognized area of scholarship within pediatric hospital medicine can be described as educational quality improvement (EQI): a rigorous approach to the implementation and evaluation of educational interventions using QI frameworks and methodologies.6 Here we describe opportunities and benefits of the intentional incorporation and integration of QI methodology into medical education research, highlighting the article by Bauer et al7 in the June issue of Hospital Pediatrics as well as relevant examples from the literature revealing EQI best practices to guide the rigorous development and evaluation of educational projects of potential interest to pediatric hospitalists. A literature search of Ovid Medline using the keywords “plan do study act (PDSA)” and “medical education” over the past decade yielded roughly 60 publications, most …