Bridging Health Equity, Quality Improvement, and Patient Safety: A Framework for Medical Student Education

Abstract

Background: Ensuring patient safety (PS) and implementing quality improvement (QI) are well-recognized functions of healthcare delivery systems and fall within physicians' scope of practice. How to effectively introduce equity-centered PS and QI concepts into an already overloaded undergraduate medical education curriculum is a challenge.

Methods: This report describes our experiences at the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine (KPSOM), a new medical school, and how we have developed our Quality Improvement and Patient Safety curriculum within a larger institutional environment where equity and social justice are highly valued.

Results: Integrating health systems science into undergraduate medical education and concepts related to health equity requires intentional curricular design and ongoing adaptation. Lessons learned include: (1) importance of using the Basic Improvement Framework as an educational anchor; (2) understanding the value of integration across curricular phases; and (3) creating a dedicated space for curricular refinement over time.

Conclusions: Medical schools and health systems aiming to strengthen their health systems science curricula may find value in implementing structured approaches-such as the Basic Improvement Framework utilized at KPSOM-to promote early and meaningful engagement with systems-based concepts, especially health equity, throughout learners' training.

Keywords: health equity; health systems science; quality improvement; undergraduate medical education.