GME

Zach Dunkerly

Zach Dunkerly serves as the director of Patient Safety and Quality for Northeast Georgia Medical Center’s (NGMC) Graduate Medical Education (GME) program. In this role, Mr. Dunkerly develops the GME curriculum based around NGMC’s Safety and Quality program. He also serves as the chair for the NGMC GME Patient Safety & Quality subcommittee. His goal is to continue to build upon the culture of safety to help drive lasting change across all of Northeast Georgia Health System and to empower the residents to be the catalysts for a constantly improving culture of safety. Zach regularly works with the Center for Simulation and Innovation to bring the most up-to-date patient safety content to residents through the avenue of simulation. Zach is supported by a wonderful GME quality and improvement team to help meet the needs of the residents.

Mr.Dunkerly completed his undergraduate education at North Georgia College & State University and received his master’s of business administration at the University of North Georgia. He has worked at Northeast Georgia Health System for 16 years and spent six years in NGMC Patient Safety & Quality and six years in the emergency department at NGMC Gainesville before moving to GME.

Here is the conversation that we had with Mr.Dunkerly.

As the Director of Patient Safety & Quality, what are some of your key roles and responsibilities that you have on a daily basis?

I serve the Medical Education Division. I educate ~160 residents and fellow plus the faculty on various topics including Safety, Quality, DEI Topics, Professionalism, etc. Additionally, I work with the Division VP and help set the goals for the division for safety and quality.  I am also responsible forreviewing all variances and patient feedback involving the providers in the division. Furthermore, my team and I manage ~40 ongoing quality improvement projects for the division. These projects are aligned to meet both the division and system goals. I also serve on numerous committees for the institution, including Policy Steering Committee, Safety/Quality MGT, GMEC (Graduate Medical Executive Committee).

“We actively encourage our team to include the patients in this and to take in their feedback.”

Healthcare providers have become more commercial in how they track patients as 'customers,' and patients are becoming more like consumers and using those skills to help navigate the healthcare system. This means more and more patients feel they have a say in what diagnoses mean for them, how they are treated, and how they engage with their care teams. Your views on this.

As we have seen the healthcare model also shift towards population health, the utilization of engaging patients in their care needs to evolve. We actively encourage our team to include the patients in this and to take in their feedback. By doing so, we have been able to increase compliance from our patients in terms of taking their health seriously. The utilization of this and our EMR to actively keep our patients engaged has resulted in more annual wellness visits for the institution.

How is ensuring adequate staffing at healthcare organizations a key element of patient safety, and health systems, hospitals, and physician practices need to step up efforts to care for caregivers?

Everybody knows the issues that lack of staffing has created in healthcare. It has severely impacted safety and quality metrics across the board.  Retention has been a major system level goal for the institution the last handful of years. More-so, we have also actively pushed our providers to include discussing care with the nurses frequently for their insight and perspective on the patient. This has resulted in a better workplace culture for the team on top of creating a real team environment. A team who is engaged, feels engaged. It delivers excellent results for many system initiatives.

What would be your piece of advice for fellow peers and colleagues?

Don’t be afraid to engage the team and look for creative and fresh ways to address problems in healthcare. Actively push the frontline staff to do take safety and quality improvement as not just a priority, but an active part of their role. Until the entire care team is engaged in improvement, healthcare will see the continuous wave cycle with their metrics.