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Aaron Mitchell, MD[/caption]
Aaron Mitchell, MD, began his role as the Durham VA Medical Center’s third chief resident for quality improvement and patient safety in July. As chief resident, Dr. Mitchell will lead quality improvement and patient safety initiatives at the Durham VA and lead morbidity and mortality conferences at Duke. For his chief resident year, Mitchell said he is looking forward to continuing his quality improvement research, starting new projects and stepping into teaching and attending physician roles.
Mitchell began preparing for his chief resident year in January, attending regular seminars on quality improvement theory led by Dave Simel, MD, vice chair for Veterans Affairs in the Department of Medicine.
Mitchell is one of 32 quality improvement and patient safety chief residents at VA medical centers across the country who will be leading quality improvement projects, receiving training from mentors and participating in a national curriculum meant to help usher in a new generation of quality improvement leaders who will help residents implement quality improvement initiatives.
For Mitchell, his interest in quality improvement and patient safety grew during residency at Duke. Mitchell said seeing the work of Ryan Schulteis, MD, the Durham VA’s first chief resident for quality improvement and patient safety, and Jonathan Bae, MD, who led the residency program’s quality improvement initiatives until July, sparked his interest, and Mitchell found that quality improvement and patient safety research was a good fit with his broader research interest.
“What I’m planning on doing in my career down the road is health services research, which is studying the whole health care system, seeing how good a job it does in terms of what we are able to deliver to patients, and studying its shortcomings for potential ways to make improvements,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell said his interest in studying how physicians use the available tools to treat patients is complementary to quality improvement research because both research areas look at “making sure physicians are using the proper tools and technologies for our patients.”
Quality improvement research is not new to Mitchell. As a resident, Mitchell worked on several quality improvement projects, including one that looked at the inter-hospital transfer protocol for patients coming to Duke from other hospitals.
Mitchell said the project grew out of dissatisfaction on the part of Duke residents, who felt that they were often caring for patients without knowledge of the patients’ full clinical record. Working with fellow resident Kevin Shah, MD, MBA, and others, Mitchell said the residents were able to redesign the process so that residents were more prepared when accepting patients from outside hospitals.
Mitchell’s quality improvement research, working with pediatrics resident Deana Miller, MD, has also looked at shift-to-shift handoffs and how the information that is conveyed during a handoff prepares residents to react to emerging patient changes, such as code situations.
Mitchell said he is looking forward to finding and answering new quality improvement questions during his chief resident year. He is already mining the VA database to look at patterns of care within the VA system and finding interesting questions to investigate.
So far, he has been involved in tracking and measuring changes in patient flow through the internal medicine service at the Durham VA that have resulted from the recent reorganization of the general medicine team structures there, where resident shifts are now following a 24-hour call system rather than a 12-hour call system.
Other areas that he has begun to investigate include proper vaccination of post-splenectomy patients and preventable readmissions for obstructive pulmonary disease. Either of these investigations could turn into longer-term projects, Mitchell said, depending on whether he identifies any areas for improvement. A longer-term project will likely be to study the timeliness of care provided to cancer patients at the Durham VA.
“I’m also looking forward to the teaching roles that come with this position, specifically getting to organize the morbidity and mortality conferences and the quality improvement conferences for senior residents on the VA’s general medicine service,” he said.
Mitchell also hopes to play more of a leadership role in the cost conscious medicine series that the residency program has incorporated into their noon conference series.
“I am excited to be an attending physician for the first time and to be a leader for new interns and second-year residents,” he said.
Mitchell did not always want to go into medicine. As an undergraduate at Yale University, he initially thought he would study theoretical physics. His interests moved to biology, with the intention of doing bench research, but a health care mission trip to Bolivia showed Mitchell the value of interacting with patients.
Mitchell attended New York University for medical school and came to Duke for his internal medicine residency. He said when he interviewed for residency at Duke he was “blown away by the program.”
“I spent time here as a fourth-year medical student on the hematology service and found the level of intellectual capability and friendliness on the part of the faculty to be something I hadn’t experienced at my medical school institution or others where I interviewed,” Mitchell said. “You could say choosing a program was a hard decision because I interviewed at a lot of places, but there was never really any competition.”
In his free time, Mitchell likes to play soccer and enjoys distance running. He said he tries to visit his parents, who live near Asheville, as often as he can. After his chief resident year, Mitchell plans to complete a fellowship in oncology and continue to do health services research.
“I hope to be someone with a split time schedule, with some clinical days but to a large extent doing outcomes research and health services research in oncology,” he said.
Meet the chief residents:
Aaron Mitchell, MD[/caption]
Aaron Mitchell, MD, began his role as the Durham VA Medical Center’s third chief resident for quality improvement and patient safety in July. As chief resident, Dr. Mitchell will lead quality improvement and patient safety initiatives at the Durham VA and lead morbidity and mortality conferences at Duke. For his chief resident year, Mitchell said he is looking forward to continuing his quality improvement research, starting new projects and stepping into teaching and attending physician roles.
Mitchell began preparing for his chief resident year in January, attending regular seminars on quality improvement theory led by Dave Simel, MD, vice chair for Veterans Affairs in the Department of Medicine.
Mitchell is one of 32 quality improvement and patient safety chief residents at VA medical centers across the country who will be leading quality improvement projects, receiving training from mentors and participating in a national curriculum meant to help usher in a new generation of quality improvement leaders who will help residents implement quality improvement initiatives.
For Mitchell, his interest in quality improvement and patient safety grew during residency at Duke. Mitchell said seeing the work of Ryan Schulteis, MD, the Durham VA’s first chief resident for quality improvement and patient safety, and Jonathan Bae, MD, who led the residency program’s quality improvement initiatives until July, sparked his interest, and Mitchell found that quality improvement and patient safety research was a good fit with his broader research interest.
“What I’m planning on doing in my career down the road is health services research, which is studying the whole health care system, seeing how good a job it does in terms of what we are able to deliver to patients, and studying its shortcomings for potential ways to make improvements,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell said his interest in studying how physicians use the available tools to treat patients is complementary to quality improvement research because both research areas look at “making sure physicians are using the proper tools and technologies for our patients.”
Quality improvement research is not new to Mitchell. As a resident, Mitchell worked on several quality improvement projects, including one that looked at the inter-hospital transfer protocol for patients coming to Duke from other hospitals.
Mitchell said the project grew out of dissatisfaction on the part of Duke residents, who felt that they were often caring for patients without knowledge of the patients’ full clinical record. Working with fellow resident Kevin Shah, MD, MBA, and others, Mitchell said the residents were able to redesign the process so that residents were more prepared when accepting patients from outside hospitals.
Mitchell’s quality improvement research, working with pediatrics resident Deana Miller, MD, has also looked at shift-to-shift handoffs and how the information that is conveyed during a handoff prepares residents to react to emerging patient changes, such as code situations.
Mitchell said he is looking forward to finding and answering new quality improvement questions during his chief resident year. He is already mining the VA database to look at patterns of care within the VA system and finding interesting questions to investigate.
So far, he has been involved in tracking and measuring changes in patient flow through the internal medicine service at the Durham VA that have resulted from the recent reorganization of the general medicine team structures there, where resident shifts are now following a 24-hour call system rather than a 12-hour call system.
Other areas that he has begun to investigate include proper vaccination of post-splenectomy patients and preventable readmissions for obstructive pulmonary disease. Either of these investigations could turn into longer-term projects, Mitchell said, depending on whether he identifies any areas for improvement. A longer-term project will likely be to study the timeliness of care provided to cancer patients at the Durham VA.
“I’m also looking forward to the teaching roles that come with this position, specifically getting to organize the morbidity and mortality conferences and the quality improvement conferences for senior residents on the VA’s general medicine service,” he said.
Mitchell also hopes to play more of a leadership role in the cost conscious medicine series that the residency program has incorporated into their noon conference series.
“I am excited to be an attending physician for the first time and to be a leader for new interns and second-year residents,” he said.
Mitchell did not always want to go into medicine. As an undergraduate at Yale University, he initially thought he would study theoretical physics. His interests moved to biology, with the intention of doing bench research, but a health care mission trip to Bolivia showed Mitchell the value of interacting with patients.
Mitchell attended New York University for medical school and came to Duke for his internal medicine residency. He said when he interviewed for residency at Duke he was “blown away by the program.”
“I spent time here as a fourth-year medical student on the hematology service and found the level of intellectual capability and friendliness on the part of the faculty to be something I hadn’t experienced at my medical school institution or others where I interviewed,” Mitchell said. “You could say choosing a program was a hard decision because I interviewed at a lot of places, but there was never really any competition.”
In his free time, Mitchell likes to play soccer and enjoys distance running. He said he tries to visit his parents, who live near Asheville, as often as he can. After his chief resident year, Mitchell plans to complete a fellowship in oncology and continue to do health services research.
“I hope to be someone with a split time schedule, with some clinical days but to a large extent doing outcomes research and health services research in oncology,” he said.
Meet the chief residents:
- Nilesh Patel, MD, MS, chief resident of internal medicine, Duke University Hospital
- Coral Giovacchini, MD, chief resident of internal medicine, Durham VA Medical Center
- Bonike Oloruntoba, MD, chief resident, Duke Regional Hospital and Ambulatory Medicine