As part of IHI's early work (1998) to incorporate the teaching of quality improvement into health professions education curricula, eight knowledge domains were identified as essential core content that all health professions students should learn as part of their training.

1. Health care as process, system
2. Variation and measurement
3. Customer/beneficiary knowledge
4. Leading, following, and making changes in health care
5. Collaboration
6. Social context and accountability
7. Developing new locally useful knowledge
8. Professional subject matter

The knowledge domains have also been referenced in several articles and reports, including:

• Contemporary issues in medicine: Quality of care
  
  
• A framework for teaching medical students and residents about practice based learning and improvement, synthesized from a literature review

The thinking about the necessary core competencies continues to be refined as part of IHI's ongoing work in this area.