Baylor College of Medicine

Busy medical professionals are bombarded with information they must retain and put to use long after its initial presentation. How do their leaders make sure vital knowledge sticks – and then will be applied when it’s needed months and even years later?

The Challenge

At Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), several week-long rotations in clinical subspecialities present information that likely isn’t reviewed again until after residents move on to the next rotation. Yet the earlier knowledge has to be fully retained and top of mind so it can be put to use in clinical settings – most often when residents least expect it. There’s no room for forgetting when a patient’s care lies in the balance.

The Solution

Baylor College of Medicine’s Dr. Ertug Kovanci, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, watched what other Baylor teaching professors were doing with Qstream, and thought it was a great fit for his 4-week reproductive endocrinology and infertility rotation. Starting in January, dozens of BCM residents received three scenario-based challenges every other day, delivered to their choice of mobile device using Qstream’s

platform. Scenarios reviewed fundamental information the residents would need with patients, such as “Which of the following is most likely to be abnormal in a 25- year-old female with premature ovarian failure and normal chromosomes”, followed by several answer choices.

The Results

The residents’ response to Qstream was swift and upbeat with adjectives like “cool,” “fun” and “convenient.” The clinical residents loved Qstream’s accessibility from their mobile phones, the predominant way in which they received and answered scenarios. They praised the way the platform provided immediate feedback on their answers and its accessibility from anywhere, not only while at the hospital, but also at home or on the go.

Dr. Kovanci anticipated needing four months for residents to complete the set of roughly 25 brief, scenario-based challenges that the Qstream system pushed to them every other day. Instead numerous residents completed their Qstream scenarios weeks ahead of schedule, and many of them asked for more scenarios to review and answer.

“Qstream gave me a way to access these residents even though our 4-week rotation together was complete,” he said. “I get to teach more, they get to learn more, and it’s convenient for everyone.” Qstream also enabled a genuine dialogue on topic areas in which they struggled, he said – information that he is factoring into the Qstream program he will use for the incoming year’s set of resident where he plans to double the number of challenges.

As a busy professional himself who manages residency rotation supervision as well as running a private practice, Dr. Kovanci also appreciated Qstream’s features that automate the process of posting, then delivering challenges, and provide an at-a-glance view of how residents are performing. His plan is to compare this year’s residents’ aggregate score on the written Council on Resident Education in Obstetrics and Gynecology (CREOG) exam that is administered nationally each January – taken in January before the start of the Qstream course – against the scores of next year’s residency group to quantify Qstream’s impact.

About Baylor College of Medicine

Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), located in the Texas Medical Center in Houston, is a health sciences university that creates and applies science and discoveries to further education, healthcare and community service locally and globally. It includes a medical school, Baylor College of Medicine, which is one of the leading research-intensive medical schools in the country; the Baylor College of Medicine Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences; the Baylor College of Medicine School of Allied Health Sciences; and the Baylor College of Medicine National School of Tropical Medicine. BCM is consistently rated among the top-tier medical programs in the country.