Predictors of faculty narrative evaluation quality in medical school clerkships.

INTRODUCTION: Narrative approaches to assessment provide meaningful and valid representations of trainee performance. Yet, narratives are frequently perceived as vague, nonspecific and low quality. To date, there is little research examining factors associated with narrative evaluation quality, particularly in undergraduate medical education. The purpose of this study was to examine associations of faculty- and student-level characteristics with the quality of faculty member's narrative evaluations of clerkship students. METHODS: The authors reviewed faculty narrative evaluations of 50 students' clinical performance in their inpatient medicine and neurology clerkships, resulting in 165 and 87 unique evaluations in the respective clerkships. The authors evaluated narrative quality using the Narrative Evaluation Quality Instrument (NEQI). The authors used linear mixed effects modelling to predict total NEQI score. Explanatory covariates included the following: time to evaluation completion, number of weeks spent with student, faculty total weeks on service per year, total faculty years in clinical education, student gender, faculty gender, and an interaction term between student and faculty gender. RESULTS: Significantly higher narrative evaluation quality was associated with a shorter time to evaluation completion, with NEQI scores decreasing by approximately 0.3 points every 10 days following students' rotations (p = .004). Additionally, women faculty had statistically higher quality narrative evaluations with NEQI scores 1.92 points greater than men faculty (p = .012). All other covariates were not significant. CONCLUSIONS: The quality of faculty members' narrative evaluations of medical students was associated with time to evaluation completion and faculty gender but not faculty experience in clinical education, faculty weeks on service, or the amount of time spent with students. Findings advance understanding on ways to improve the quality of narrative evaluations which are imperative given assessment models that will increase the volume and reliance on narratives.

Frequency and Severity of Moral Distress in Nephrology Fellows: A National Survey.

INTRODUCTION: Moral distress is a negative affective response to a situation in which one is compelled to act in a way that conflicts with one's values. Little is known about the workplace scenarios that elicit moral distress in nephrology fellows. METHODS: We sent a moral distress survey to 148 nephrology fellowship directors with a request to forward it to their fellows. Using a 5-point (0-4) scale, fellows rated both the frequency (never to very frequently) and severity (not at all disturbing to very disturbing) of commonly encountered workplace scenarios. Ratings of ≥3 were used to define "frequent" and "moderate-to-severe" moral distress. RESULTS: The survey was forwarded by 64 fellowship directors to 386 fellows, 142 of whom (37%) responded. Their mean age was 33 ± 3.6 years and 43% were female. The scenarios that most commonly elicited moderate to severe moral distress were initiating dialysis in situations that the fellow considered futile (77%), continuing dialysis in a hopelessly ill patient (81%) and carrying a high patient census (75%), and observing other providers giving overly optimistic descriptions of the benefits of dialysis (64%). Approximately 27% had considered quitting fellowship during training, including 9% at the time of survey completion. CONCLUSION: A substantial majority of nephrology trainees experienced moral distress of moderate to severe intensity, mainly related to the futile treatment of hopelessly ill patients. Efforts to reduce moral distress in trainees are required.

Abstracts From the Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Clerkship Directors of Internal Medicine (CDIM).

Since its inception in 1989, Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine (CDIM) has promoted excellence in medical student education. CDIM members move medical education forward by sharing innovations in curriculum and assessment and discoveries related to educating our students and administering our programs. The Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine, of which CDIM is a founding member, broadens the umbrella beyond student education to include five academically focused specialty organizations representing departments of medicine, teaching hospitals, and medical schools working together to advance learning, discovery, and caring. CDIM held its 2015 annual meeting at Academic Internal Medicine Week in Atlanta, Georgia. This year 36 innovation and research submissions were selected for either oral abstract or poster presentation. The quality of the presentations was outstanding this year and included many of the most important issues in medical education. The CDIM research committee selected the following seven abstracts as being of the highest quality, the most generalizable, and relevant to the readership of Teaching and Learning in Medicine. Two abstracts include information from the CDIM annual survey, which remains a rich source for answering questions about student education on a national level. Looking at trends in medical education, three of the seven selected abstracts mention entrustable professional activities. Three of the abstracts address how we assess student skill and provide them with appropriate feedback. These include two schools' approach to bringing milestones into the medical student realm, use of objective structured clinical exam for assessing clinical skill in clerkship, and what students want in terms of feedback. Four articles deal with curricular innovation. These include interprofessional education, high-value care, transitions of care, and internship preparation. We are pleased to share these abstracts, which represent the breadth and quality of thought of our CDIM members.

How we developed and piloted an electronic key features examination for the internal medicine clerkship based on a US national curriculum.

BACKGROUND: Key features examinations (KFEs) have been used to assess clinical decision making in medical education, yet there are no reports of an online KFE-based on a national curriculum for the internal medicine clerkship. What we did: The authors developed and pilot tested an electronic KFE based on the US Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine core curriculum. Teams, with expert oversight and peer review, developed key features (KFs) and cases. EVALUATION: The exam was pilot tested at eight medical schools with 162 third and fourth year medical students, of whom 96 (59.3%) responded to a survey. While most students reported that the exam was more difficult than a multiple choice question exam, 61 (83.3%) students agreed that it reflected problems seen in clinical practice and 51 (69.9%) students reported that it more accurately assessed the ability to make clinical decisions. CONCLUSIONS: The development of an electronic KFs exam is a time-intensive process. A team approach offers built-in peer review and accountability. Students, although not familiar with this format in the US, recognized it as authentically assessing clinical decision-making for problems commonly seen in the clerkship.

The effect of resident duty-hours restrictions on internal medicine clerkship experiences: surveys of medical students and clerkship directors.

UNLABELLED: PHENOMENON: Medical students receive much of their inpatient teaching from residents who now experience restructured teaching services to accommodate the 2011 duty-hour regulations (DHR). The effect of DHR on medical student educational experiences is unknown. We examined medical students' and clerkship directors' perceptions of the effects of the 2011 DHR on internal medicine clerkship students' experiences with teaching, feedback and evaluation, and patient care. APPROACH: Students at 14 institutions responded to surveys after their medicine clerkship or subinternship. Students who completed their clerkship (n = 839) and subinternship (n = 228) March to June 2011 (pre-DHR historical controls) were compared to clerkship students (n = 895) and subinterns (n = 377) completing these rotations March to June 2012 (post-DHR). Z tests for proportions correcting for multiple comparisons were performed to assess attitude changes. The Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine annual survey queried institutional members about the 2011 DHR just after implementation. FINDINGS: Survey response rates were 64% and 50% for clerkship students and 60% and 48% for subinterns in 2011 and 2012 respectively, and 82% (99/121) for clerkship directors. Post-DHR, more clerkship students agreed that attendings (p =.011) and interns (p =.044) provided effective teaching. Clerkship students (p =.013) and subinterns (p =.001) believed patient care became more fragmented. The percentage of holdover patients clerkship students (p =.001) and subinterns (p =.012) admitted increased. Clerkship directors perceived negative effects of DHR for students on all survey items. Most disagreed that interns (63.1%), residents (67.8%), or attendings (71.1%) had more time to teach. Most disagreed that students received more feedback from interns (56.0%) or residents (58.2%). Fifty-nine percent felt that students participated in more patient handoffs. INSIGHTS: Students perceive few adverse consequences of the 2011 DHR on their internal medicine experiences, whereas their clerkship director educators have negative perceptions. Future research should explore the impact of fragmented patient care on the student-patient relationship and students' clinical skills acquisition.

Mentoring: Shaping the professional identity of the academic internal medicine hospitalist.

BACKGROUND: Burnout and lagging academic productivity are pressing challenges in hospital medicine, leading to stagnation and attrition. Mentoring shapes professional identity formation and enhances faculty vitality and retention, but has not been optimized among academic hospitalists. OBJECTIVES: We sought to explore how mentoring impacts academic hospitalist professional identity and to elucidate barriers to mentoring in the field. METHODS: We conducted focus groups at three academic medical centers. Informed by social-constructivist theory of identity development, we coded deidentified data and performed thematic analysis. RESULTS: Thirty-one academic hospitalists participated with 1 to >20 years experience. Mentoring shaped professional identity formation in six core domains: choosing academic hospital medicine, identifying and focusing on an area of interest, progressing career, navigating work-life integration, staying in academic medicine, and becoming a mentor. Distinct models included dyadic mentoring, peer mentoring, organic mentoring, and mentoring teams, each with benefits and limitations. We identified nine key mentoring actions that influenced hospitalist professional identity formation and career development. Mentoring barriers included lack of time, awareness, and access to experienced mentors, as well as poor quality mentoring and mentor-mentee malalignment. Aspects of hospitalists' professional identity also posed barriers, including ambivalence around academic identity. CONCLUSIONS: Mentoring fosters academic thriving and retention in academic hospitalists. Access to effective mentoring remains lacking due to few senior mentors in the relatively new field of hospital medicine and reticence in academic identity, among other factors. Mentoring training, impact on underrepresented minority hospitalists, and integration into institutional culture should be considered for enhancing the career development of academic hospitalists.

Bias Reporting in the Clinical Learning Environment: A National Survey of Internal Medicine Clerkship Directors.

PURPOSE: Bias exists in the internal medicine (IM) clinical learning environment; however, it is unclear how often bias is identified by clerkship directors (CDs), how bias is addressed, and whether best practices exist for identifying or mitigating bias. This study investigated how IM CDs receive and respond to bias reports in the clinical learning environment. METHOD: In May 2021, the Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine (CDIM) created an 18-question survey assessing the frequency of bias reports, macroaggressions and microaggressions, and report outcomes. Of the 152 U.S. medical schools that met study accreditation criteria, the final survey population included 137 CDs (90%) whose medical schools held valid CDIM membership. RESULTS: Of the 137 surveys sent, 100 were returned (survey response rate, 73%). Respondents reported a median of 3 bias events (interquartile range, 1-4; range, 0-50) on the IM clerkship in the past year. Among 76 respondents who reported 1 or more event, microaggressions represented 43 of the 75 total events (57%). No mechanism emerged as the most commonly used method for reporting bias. Race/ethnicity (48 of 75 [64%]) and gender (41 of 75 [55%]) were cited most as the basis for bias reports, whereas the most common sources of bias were student interactions with attending physicians (51 of 73 [70%]) and residents (40 of 73 [55%]). Of the 75 respondents, 53 (71%) described the frequency of bias event reports as having increased or remained unchanged during the past year. Only 48 CDs (49%) responded that they were "always" aware of the outcome of bias reports. CONCLUSIONS: Bias reports remain heterogeneous, are likely underreported, and lack best practice responses. There is a need to systematically capture bias events to work toward a just culture that fosters accountability and to identify bias events through more robust reporting.

Correction: Clinical reasoning education in the clerkship years: A cross-disciplinary national needs assessment.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0273250.].

Transforming an Orthopaedic Unit Into an "Age-Friendly" Unit Through Implementation of the American Geriatrics Society's CoCare: Ortho Program.

OBJECTIVE: To transform an inpatient orthopaedic unit into an age-friendly unit for geriatric fracture center (GFC) patients. DESIGN: Pragmatic dissemination study of a continuous quality improvement intervention with episodic data review. SETTING: Large quaternary care university hospital with no on-site geriatrics program and no dedicated geriatric inpatient unit. PARTICIPANTS: Individuals 60 years of age and older with fragility fracture of the native proximal femur hospitalized from July 2017 to June 2020. INTERVENTION: A hospital medicine-orthopaedics comanagement model for a GFC was developed using processes, tools, and education provided by the American Geriatrics Society's AGS CoCare: Ortho program to support the age-friendly 4Ms principles: mentation, mobility, medications, and what matters. Delirium reduction strategies included minimizing sleep interruption through changes in blood draw times, order sets for pain management, and nursing education. Mobility specialists were incorporated to improve early mobilization on the orthopaedic unit. MAIN OUTCOME MEASUREMENTS: Frequency of weight-bearing on postoperative day 1 and frequency of delirium among GFC patients on the orthopaedic unit were compared with those among concurrent GFC patients on other units. RESULTS: Frequency of delirium was 26% among patients on the orthopaedic unit versus 35% among those on other units (P = 0.055). Frequency of weight-bearing on post-operative day 1 was 84% among patients on the orthopaedic unit versus 72% among those on other units (P = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: AGS CoCare: Ortho is an effective dissemination program for establishing a hospital medicine-orthopaedics comanagement program and making an orthopaedic unit age-friendly in a hospital without onsite geriatricians or a dedicated geriatrics unit. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic Level III. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.

Advancing the assessment of clinical reasoning across the health professions: Definitional and methodologic recommendations.

The importance of clinical reasoning in patient care is well-recognized across all health professions. Validity evidence supporting high quality clinical reasoning assessment is essential to ensure health professional schools are graduating learners competent in this domain. However, through the course of a large scoping review, we encountered inconsistent terminology for clinical reasoning and inconsistent reporting of methodology, reflecting a somewhat fractured body of literature on clinical reasoning assessment. These inconsistencies impeded our ability to synthesize across studies and appropriately compare assessment tools. More specifically, we encountered: 1) a wide array of clinical reasoning-like terms that were rarely defined or informed by a conceptual framework, 2) limited details of assessment methodology, and 3) inconsistent reporting of the steps taken to establish validity evidence for clinical reasoning assessments. Consolidating our experience in conducting this review, we provide recommendations on key definitional and methodologic elements to better support the development, description, study, and reporting of clinical reasoning assessments.

Point-of-Care Ultrasound Training during Nephrology Fellowship: A National Survey of Fellows and Program Directors.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS)-performed by a clinician during a patient encounter and used in patient assessment and care planning-has many potential applications in nephrology. Yet, US nephrologists have been slow to adopt POCUS, which may affect the training of nephrology fellows. This study sought to identify the current state of POCUS training and implementation in nephrology fellowships. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS: Concise survey instruments measuring attitudes toward POCUS, its current use, fellow competence, and POCUS curricula were disseminated to (1) 912 US nephrology fellows taking the 2021 Nephrology In-Training Examination and (2) 229 nephrology training program directors and associate program directors. Fisher exact, chi-squared, and Wilcoxon rank sum tests were used to compare the frequencies of responses and the average responses between fellows and training program directors/associate program directors when possible. RESULTS: Fellow and training program directors/associate program directors response rates were 69% and 37%, respectively. Only 38% of fellows (240 respondents) reported receiving POCUS education during their fellowship, and just 33% of those who did receive POCUS training reported feeling competent to use POCUS independently. Similarly, just 23% of training program directors/associate program directors indicated that they had a POCUS curriculum in place, although 74% of training program directors and associate program directors indicated that a program was in development or that there was interest in creating a POCUS curriculum. Most fellow and faculty respondents rated commonly covered POCUS topics-including dialysis access imaging and kidney biopsy-as "important" or "very important," with the greatest interest in diagnostic kidney ultrasound. Guided scanning with an instructor was the highest-rated teaching strategy. The most frequently reported barrier to POCUS program development was the lack of available instructors. CONCLUSIONS: Despite high trainee and faculty interest in POCUS, the majority of current nephrology fellows are not receiving POCUS training. Hands-on training guided by an instructor is highly valued, yet availability of adequately trained instructors remains a barrier to program development. PODCAST: This article contains a podcast at https://www.asn-online.org/media/podcast/CJASN/2022_09_21_CJN01850222.mp3.

Clinical reasoning education in the clerkship years: A cross-disciplinary national needs assessment.

BACKGROUND: Improving clinical reasoning education has been identified as an important strategy to reduce diagnostic error-an important cause of adverse patient outcomes. Clinical reasoning is fundamental to each specialty, yet the extent to which explicit instruction in clinical reasoning occurs across specialties in the clerkship years remains unclear. METHOD: The Alliance for Clinical Education (ACE) Clinical Reasoning Workgroup and the Directors of Clinical Skills Courses (DOCS) Clinical Reasoning Workgroup collaborated to develop a clinical reasoning needs assessment survey. The survey questionnaire covered seven common clinical reasoning topics including illness scripts, semantic qualifiers, cognitive biases and dual process theory. Questionnaires were delivered electronically through ACE member organizations, which are primarily composed of clerkship leaders across multiple specialties. Data was collected between March of 2019 and May of 2020. RESULTS: Questionnaires were completed by 305 respondents across the six organizations. For each of the seven clinical reasoning topics, the majority of clerkship leaders (range 77.4% to 96.8%) rated them as either moderately important or extremely important to cover during the clerkship curriculum. Despite this perceived importance, these topics were not consistently covered in respondents' clerkships (range 29.4% to 76.4%) and sometimes not covered anywhere in the clinical curriculum (range 5.1% to 22.9%). CONCLUSIONS: Clerkship educators across a range of clinical specialties view clinical reasoning instruction as important, however little curricular time is allocated to formally teach the various strategies. Faculty development and restructuring of curricular time may help address this potential gap.

A collaborative model for developing and maintaining virtual patients for medical education.

There is great interest in using computer-assisted instruction in medical education, but getting computer-assisted instruction materials used broadly is difficult to achieve. We describe a successful model for the development and maintenance of a specific type of computer-assisted instruction - virtual patients - in medical education. The collaborative model's seven key components are described and compared to other models of diffusion of innovation and curriculum development. The collaborative development model that began in one medical discipline is now extended to two additional disciplines, through partnerships with their respective clerkship director organizations. We believe that the ability to achieve broad use of virtual patients, and to transition the programs from successfully relying on grant funding to financially self-sustaining, resulted directly from the collaborative development and maintenance process. This process can be used in other learning environments and for the development of other types of computer-assisted instruction programs.

Proactive Integration of Mental Health Care in Hospital Medicine: PRIME Medicine.

BACKGROUND: Proactive consultation-liaison (C-L) psychiatry has been shown to reduce hospital length of stay (LOS), increase psychiatric C-L consult rate, and improve hospital staff satisfaction. Nursing attrition has not been studied in relation to proactive C-L. OBJECTIVE: Our primary aim in evaluating the proactive C-L service called Proactive Integration of Mental Health Care in Medicine (PRIME Medicine) is to analyze change in LOS over 10 months using historical and contemporary comparison cohorts. As secondary aims, we assess change in psychiatric consultation rate, time to consultation, and change in nurse attrition. METHODS: PRIME Medicine was implemented on 3 hospital medicine units as a quality-improvement project. Team members systematically screened patients arriving to assigned units for psychiatric comorbidity. Identified patients were reviewed with hospitalist teams and nurses with the goal of early intervention. RESULTS: Including historical and contemporary comparison cohorts, the mean sample age was 62.4 years (n = 8884). Absolute LOS was unchanged, but difference-in-difference analysis trended toward reduced LOS by 0.16 day (P = 0.08). Consultation rate increased from 1.6% (40 consults) to 7.4% (176 consults). Time to consultation was unchanged (4.0-3.8 d). Annual per-unit nursing turnover increased from 4.7 to 5.7 on PRIME units but from 8.5 to 12.0 on comparison units. Nurses citing "population" as the reason for leaving decreased from 2.7 to 1.7 on PRIME units but increased from 1.5 to 4.5 on comparison units. PRIME Medicine led to increased consultation rate, and our unit-wide outcomes provide a conservative estimate of effect. Factors that may have influenced effect size include our cohort's advanced age, considerable emergency department boarding times, increasing proportion of patients discharged to skilled nursing facilities, and concurrent LOS-reduction initiatives on all units. The favorable trends in nursing attrition on PRIME units may be explained in part by our prior finding that PRIME Medicine was associated with enhanced nursing satisfaction. CONCLUSIONS: While PRIME Medicine had no more than a modest effect on LOS, it was associated with a markedly increased psychiatric consult rate and favorable trends in nursing retention. This analysis highlights important factors that should be considered when implementing and determining value metrics for a proactive C-L service.

Which Internal Medicine Clerkship Characteristics Are Associated With Students' Performance on the NBME Medicine Subject Exam? A Multi-Institutional Analysis.

PURPOSE: To identify which internal medicine clerkship characteristics may relate to NBME Medicine Subject Examination scores, given the growing trend toward earlier clerkship start dates. METHOD: The authors used linear mixed effects models (univariable and multivariable) to determine associations between medicine exam performance and clerkship characteristics (longitudinal status, clerkship length, academic start month, ambulatory clinical experience, presence of a study day, involvement in a combined clerkship, preclinical curriculum type, medicine exam timing). Additional covariates included number of NBME clinical subject exams used, number of didactic hours, use of a criterion score for passing the medicine exam, whether medicine exam performance was used to designate clerkship honors, and United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1 performance. The sample included 24,542 examinees from 62 medical schools spanning 3 academic years (2011-2014). RESULTS: The multivariable analysis found no significant association between clerkship length and medicine exam performance (all pairwise P > .05). However, a small number of examinees beginning their academic term in January scored marginally lower than those starting in July (P < .001). Conversely, examinees scored higher on the medicine exam later in the academic year (all pairwise P < .001). Examinees from schools that used a criterion score for passing the medicine exam also scored higher than those at schools that did not (P < .05). Step 1 performance remained positively associated with medicine exam performance even after controlling for all other variables in the model (P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: In this sample, the authors found no association between many clerkship variables and medicine exam performance. Instead, Step 1 performance was the most powerful predictor of medicine exam performance. These findings suggest that medicine exam performance reflects the overall medical knowledge students accrue during their education rather than any specific internal medicine clerkship characteristics.

Association between hand-off patients and subject exam performance in medicine clerkship students.

BACKGROUND: Teaching hospitals increasingly rely on transfers of patient care to another physician (hand-offs) to comply with duty hour restrictions. Little is known about the impact of hand-offs on medical students. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of hand-offs on the types of patients students see and the association with their subsequent Medicine Subject Exam performance. DESIGN: Observational study over 1 year. PARTICIPANTS: Third-year medical students in an Inpatient Medicine Clerkship at five hospitals with night float systems. PRIMARY OUTCOME: Medicine Subject Exam at the end of the clerkship; explanatory variables: number of fresh (without prior evaluation) and hand-off patients, diagnoses, subspecialty patients, and full evaluations performed during the clerkship, and United Stated Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step I scores. MAIN RESULTS: Of the 2,288 patients followed by 89 students, 990 (43.3%) were hand-offs. In a linear regression model, the only variables significantly associated with students' Subject Exam percentile rankings were USMLE Step I scores (B = 0.26, P < 0.001) and the number of full evaluations completed on fresh patients (B =0.20, P = 0.048; model r (2) = 0.58). In other words, for each additional fresh patient evaluated, Subject Exam percentile rankings increased 0.2 points. For students in the highest quartile of Subject Exam percentile rankings, only Step I scores showed a significant association (B = 0.22, P = 0.002; r (2) = 0.5). For students in the lowest quartile, only fresh patient evaluations demonstrated a significant association (B = 0.27, P = 0.03; r (2) = 0.34). CONCLUSIONS: Hand-offs constitute a substantial portion of students' patients and may have less educational value than "fresh" patients, especially for lower performing students.

Validity Evidence for a Brief Online Key Features Examination in the Internal Medicine Clerkship.

PURPOSE: Medical educators use key features examinations (KFEs) to assess clinical decision making in many countries, but not in U.S. medical schools. The authors developed an online KFE to assess third-year medical students' decision-making abilities during internal medicine (IM) clerkships in the United States. They used Messick's unified validity framework to gather validity evidence regarding response process, internal structure, and relationship to other variables. METHOD: From February 2012 through January 2013, 759 students (at eight U.S. medical schools) had 75 minutes to complete one of four KFE forms during their IM clerkship. They also completed a survey regarding their experiences. The authors performed item analyses and generalizability studies, comparing KFE scores with prior clinical experience and National Board of Medical Examiners Subject Examination (NBME-SE) scores. RESULTS: Five hundred fifteen (67.9%) students consented to participate. Across KFE forms, mean scores ranged from 54.6% to 60.3% (standard deviation 8.4-9.6%), and Phi-coefficients ranged from 0.36 to 0.52. Adding five cases to the most reliable form would increase the Phi-coefficient to 0.59. Removing the least discriminating case from the two most reliable forms would increase the alpha coefficient to, respectively, 0.58 and 0.57. The main source of variance came from the interaction of students (nested in schools) and cases. Correlation between KFE and NBME-SE scores ranged from 0.24 to 0.47 (P < .01). CONCLUSIONS: These results provide strong evidence for response-process and relationship-to-other-variables validity and moderate internal structure validity for using a KFE to complement other assessments in U.S. IM clerkships.

The Procedure Coordinator: A Resident-Driven Initiative to Increase Opportunity for Inpatient Procedures.

BACKGROUND: Training residents to become competent in common bedside procedures can be challenging. Some hospitals have attending physician-led procedure teams with oversight of all procedures to improve procedural training, but these teams require significant resources to establish and maintain. OBJECTIVE: We sought to improve resident procedural training by implementing a resident-run procedure team without routine attending involvement. METHODS: We created the role of a resident procedure coordinator (RPC). Interested residents on less time-intensive rotations voluntarily served as RPC. Medical providers in the hospital contacted the RPC through a designated pager when a bedside procedure was needed. A structured credentialing process, using direct observation and a procedure-specific checklist, was developed to determine residents' competence for completing procedures independently. Checklists were developed by the residency program and approved by institutional subspecialists. The service was implemented in June 2016 at an 850-bed academic medical center with 70 internal medicine and 32 medicine-pediatrics residents. The procedure service functioned without routine attending involvement. The impact was evaluated through resident procedure logs and surveys of residents and attending physicians. RESULTS: Compared with preimplementation procedure logs, there were substantial increases postimplementation in resident-performed procedures and the number of residents credentialed in paracenteses, thoracenteses, and lumbar punctures. Fifty-nine of 102 (58%) residents responded to the survey, with 42 (71%) reporting the initiative increased their ability to obtain procedural experience. Thirty-one of 36 (86%) attending respondents reported preferentially using the service. CONCLUSIONS: The RPC model increased resident procedural training opportunities using a structured sign-off process and an operationalized service.