Research Activities

The Wayne State Internal Medicine Program considers research a cornerstone for quality improvement and sees this an opportunity for lifelong learning and practice improvement. Specifically, every resident is required to do a Quality Improvement project. A significant portion of the residents routinely present at various conferences, including American College of Physicians local and national meetings. While not mandatory, almost all our residents have had a poster accepted in either a state level or national conference.

The Program and the Wayne State University Graduate Medical Education Department organize a yearly Quality Improvement Day where residents showcase their quality improvement work. 

Briefly, you will find below some description of research activities in the program.

Clinical Quality Improvement Projects

All residents participate in quality improvement projects. Our goal is to introduce and train residents to utilize basic quality improvement methods and improve the quality of patient care. Residents work in multidisciplinary teams which include staff from the hospital quality department as well as nursing, laboratory, pharmacy, and from electronic medical records personnel and administration. Residents actively participate in a variety of hospital committees where they discuss improvements and implement a quality standard.

Notably, our QI project focusing on decreasing the use of IV anti-hypertensive medications for non-emergent hypertension in the hospital setting has been published by BMJ Open Quality. We currently have 14 quality improvement projects with focus on both inpatient and outpatient patient quality and safety. 

Research Posters and Presentations

Residents from the Internal Medicine Program regularly present at all Michigan ACP meetings and other local meetings. Notably, our residents have won Oral Presentation awards at these meetings and going on to present at the national ACP meeting.

Global Representation

• CHEST World Congress  
• NEJM 360 Resident QI Challenge  
• European Society of Cardiology 

National Representation

• American College of Physician National Meeting 
• Society of General Internal Medicine National Meeting 
• American Thoracic Society
• American College of Cardiology 
• American Heart Association Quality of Care and Outcomes Research 
• American Heart Association 
• Annual International Symposium on Endovascular Therapy
• Transcatheter Cardiovascular therapeutics  
• Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) 
• American College of Gastroenterology 
• Society of General Internal Medicine Midwest 

Publications

Among our residents are a few well published researchers who have gone on to publish during residency while working on their project. Letters to the Editor from Resident Authors have been published in high impact journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine. An Annual Research report is available from the program office.

A sample of presentations and publications are noted below: