Restructuring the Morbidity and Mortality Conference in a Department of Pediatrics to Serve as a Vehicle for System Changes

Morbidity and Mortality conference (MMC) serves an important role in medical care and education. We restructured our Department of Pediatrics MMC to focus on multidisciplinary participation and improved communication among disciplines, quality improvement, and system changes for safer clinical care and enhanced learning from adverse outcomes.The structure and philosophy of the Department of Pediatrics MMC was changed. We present guiding principles for the restructuring process and evaluation results postrestructuring, which examined achievement of conference goals, including quality improvement.The MMC led to system changes within the Department of Pediatrics as well as other parts of the hospital. Satisfaction with these changes was high among conference participants, who felt that the conference achieved its goals of including multiple disciplines and creating system changes.The successful change in the focus of the pediatric MMC conference resulted in significant hospital-wide system changes, quality improvements, enhanced education, and departmental satisfaction.