251 Background: Quality improvement (QI) is becoming a professional expectation and essential to medical oncology practice. A study of medical oncologists found that most QI interventions are not published, suggesting barriers to knowledge dissemination. We aim to describe the authors, settings of QI interventions, and publishing journals of scholarly QI literature. Methods: We conducted a scoping review using Arksey and O'Malley's framework. A search of MEDLINE and EMBASE databases found 48,186 unique English citations from January 2001 to August 2014. Two independent reviewers were responsible for screening the search results and 270 studies were included. Characteristics of first authors, settings of QI interventions, and publishing journals were charted. We used online search engines to find institutional profiles to obtain author and institutional information. A descriptive numerical summary analysis was used to summarize and report the results. Results: The number of QI publications has increased over time, with 60 between 2001 and 2006 and 199 from 2007 to 2013. The majority of first authors are clinicians (65%), of which 59% are physicians, 31% are nurses, and 5% are pharmacists. Furthermore, 27% of first authors are primarily researchers whereas 5% are solely administrators. In addition to professional degrees, having an advanced degree was common amongst clinicians (48% of physicians, 85% of nurses, 44% of pharmacists). Forty-four percent of interventions were conducted in settings affiliated with an academic institution, as opposed to community-based settings. Only 9% of articles were published in a quality of care focused journal. Conclusions: Our scoping review found that most first authors of QI interventions are clinicians, many with an advanced degree in academic settings (rather than community-based settings where most patients receive care). The lack of studies published in quality of care focused journals may result in lost opportunities for knowledge transfer. These findings suggest that more effective knowledge dissemination and increased support for QI studies are needed to further the science of quality and ultimately improve quality of care.
Morbidity and Mortality Revisited: Applying a New Quality Improvement Paradigm in Oncology
