Emily Weber LeBrun, MD | Safety, Quality, Informatics, and Leadership Program
Emily Weber LeBrun, MD, is a professor and Founding Chief of Urogynecology & Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery at the University of Florida Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Gainesville, Florida. She completed her residency at Baystate Medical Center, Tufts Medical School and completed a fellowship in Urogynecology & Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester. Throughout her medical career, LeBrun has always gravitated towards process improvement projects. She found that Harvard Medical School’s Safety, Quality, Informatics, and Leadership program provided learners with the essential foundational skills to enact quality improvement projects at both a local and regional level, aligning with her goals. In addition, the dean of her college of medicine also wanted to build a cohort of institutional leaders to facilitate large-scale quality improvement projects, leading LeBrun to enroll in the program.
Pursuing a Passion
Even though Lebrun is the daughter of a pediatrician, she initially did not have a passion for medicine. In her early twenties, she lived in a Benedictine convent in South Dakota and then spent a year in Guatemala as a missionary. When she returned to school, she studied philosophy and medical ethics, generating an interest in health care. Throughout the beginnings of her medical career, she discovered her dedication to continual improvement strategies.
In the Safety, Quality, Informatics, and Leadership program, Lebrun explored her interests in quality improvement and practiced her skills. Between coursework, attending live lectures, and interactive workshops, she took away many valuable lessons, such as the importance of planning a project. “The planning of a Quality Improvement project is almost as important as the project itself,” she says, “A high yield project will not produce the desired effect without extremely thoughtful planning.”
The program covers a broad range of relevant topics, offering LeBrun valuable insights into the many facets of safety and quality. “The cross-disciplinary approach included training in informatics, population health, regulatory bodies, and health-system integration, which allowed for a robust and comprehensive integration of complex topics,” she says.
Learning When to Lead
In addition to improving quality improvement skills, Lebrun found that the group projects significantly strengthened her leadership abilities. Medical doctors, nurses, administrative leaders, policy makers, researchers, and other industry professionals all attend the program, creating diverse cohorts for group projects. One of the benefits of the program is that “Attendees learned to engage diverse groups early in project discussions,” shares LeBrun, “and the three group projects allowed us to practice those skills.”
LeBrun appreciated that the group projects offer the opportunity for everyone to take on the role of a leader, allowing everyone’s unique skills and backgrounds to contribute to the projects. This also meant that she had the chance to step back and discover the importance of following and observing.
“I am more inclined to sit back and to listen longer, even months, while observing the current status of a situation so that I can adequately understand the crucial elements. This approach allows individuals involved to perceive me as a partner, rather than someone trying to take over,” Lebrun says.
Putting Skills into Practice
Participants’ innovation shines through in the capstone project, where they develop a plan for quality improvement and patient safety that can then be implemented in the participants’ own health care practices, organizations, or systems.
LeBrun focused her capstone project on reducing urogynecology patient phone calls in the first 14 days following surgery. The goal is to reduce phone calls related to pain management regimens, vaginal bleeding, urinary catheter care, and constipation by 50% over a six-month period without increasing emergency room visits or readmissions. LeBrun and her team decided to engage and support patients at designated intervals with the Epic Care Companion, an interactive digital tool that would assist with these patients' follow-up care and relay specific concerns to their care team.
This project aims to enhance the patient experience and post-operative care for LeBrun’s home institution. Although it has not been implemented yet, she is optimistic that the progress will be made once her institution adopts the Epic Care Companion.