Richard H. Blum

I am the Principal Investigator of a research study, Assessing the Performance of First Year Anesthesia Residents to Ensure Basic Competence, which has been funded by a grant from the Harvard School of Medicine's Department of Anaesthesia, the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation and The Cathedral Fund. The long-term goal of this project is to have an effective, objective, credible, ongoing process for evaluation of anesthesia residents' clinical competencies ensuring that no resident graduates from any program not meeting the levels of performance that are sufficient to ensure an acceptable level of patient safety. The research team is utilizing medical simulation to evaluate residents on performance; the program will attempt to identify anesthesia residents in need of remediation early in their training programs. We have created a set of standards and criteria to test the competency of Harvard-affiliated anesthesia residents and teach them to practice safer medicine, reducing medical mistakes as well as patient complication and death. We foresee developing standards and criteria that can be adapted to each medical specialty enhancing patient safety on a large scale; we believe this education will increase overall patient safety among anesthesia residents nationwide.