Clinical Research Methodology Conference
Additional topics include diagnostic studies, prognostic studies, guideline development, economic analysis, decision analysis, and instrument development.
Journal Club
Our monthly journal club serves to illustrate the methodologies discussed in the accompanying clinical methodology conference. Critical appraisal of the publication follows established methodological guidelines, like PRISMA and CONSORT. The objectives of our integrated clinical methodology conference and journal club are to enhance our scholarly activities by closely matching the topics with specific resident projects with emphasis on practical execution issues like outcome definition, database design, statistical analysis, and manuscript writing.
Quality Improvement Committee
ACGME, as a core program requirement, mandates residents and faculty members to "consistently work in a well-coordinated manner with other health care professionals to achieve organization patient safety goals." Starting in 2016, we have had full participation of our residents in the Ascension Providence interdisciplinary spine quality improvement (QI) committee to achieve this stated goal. Using the FADE (Focus, Analyze, Develop, and Execute) model, the committee has successfully implemented annual QI projects which satisfy Michigan Spine Surgery Improvement Collaborative (MSSIC) clinical quality benchmarks and other regulatory requirements. These annual projects are further developed into academic publications.
Spine Outcome Registry
In 2012, we partnered with Ascension Providence Hospital to design, build and maintain a spine outcome registry on Midas, a cloud-based platform. We transitioned to the Balance ACS® (BACS) system in 2018. It is a cloud-based comprehensive data management platform to track outcome metrics on spine patients. Through an interactive, mobile interface, we capture patient-reported-outcomes, diagnostic, and surgical data to guide our quality improvement and scholarly activities.
