(Johns Hopkins Medicine: Baltimore, Maryland) -- Mandatory classes that aim to improve the quality of medical care seem to successfully teach doctors new concepts but don’t necessarily improve patient outcomes, suggests a thorough review of articles that examine quality improvement (QI) curricula.

“Identifying and fixing problems is something that doctors have learned to do when faced with diseases, but those problem-solving skills don’t necessarily translate into identifying or fixing health care systems in a hospital even after taking special classes,” says Romsai Boonyasai, an internist at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and co-author of the review in the Sept. 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

QI programs are designed to teach the basics of spotting and addressing problems inherent in complex medical systems, such as lack of standardized processes to reduce medical errors or inadequate communication among multiple layers of caregivers to patients whose care is complicated and whose hospital stays are compressed.

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