A Quality Improvement Initiative: Supporting the Potential of Foundation Year Doctors with a "Trauma Innovation Forum"

Junior doctors rotating through departments arrive with fresh perspectives and are particularly suited for identifying problems and providing creative solutions to improve patient care. They may, however, be unfamiliar with the process of implementing an idea into practice. We recognize the need to support foundation year doctors to develop successful quality improvement projects (QIPs). We developed a new initiative to host an annual event that gives foundation year doctors a platform to develop QIPs for their department. These ideas were pitched to an audience comprising trauma consultants from the Oxford University Hospitals and multidisciplinary staff from hospitals across the region. It offered a dedicated time away from clinical pressure to propose and receive immediate expert feedback from members of the trauma multidisciplinary team. With this refinement and supervisor project matching, it facilitated multiple areas of targeted change for the department in just one evening. In total, eight QIPs were developed from the event. Here we outline our approach and the structure of our event, which can serve as a tool for similar initiatives to be replicated in other hospitals.