Unveiling the paradoxes of implementing post graduate competency based medical education programs.

PURPOSE: Competency-based medical education (CBME) has gained prominence as an innovative model for post-graduate medical education, yet its implementation poses significant challenges, especially with regard to its sustainability. Drawing on paradox theory, we suggest that revealing the paradoxes underlying these challenges may contribute to our understanding of post graduate competency-based medical education (PGCBME) implementation processes and serve as a first-step in enhancing better implementation. Thus, the purpose of the current study is to identify the paradoxes associated with PGCBME implementation. METHOD: A qualitative study was conducted, as part of a larger action research, using in-depth semi-structured interviews with fellows and educators in eight Neonatal wards. RESULTS: Analysis revealed that the PGCBME program examined in this study involves three different levels of standardization, each serving as one side of paradoxical tensions; (1) a paradox between the need for standardized assessment tools and for free-flow flexible assessment tools, (2) a paradox between the need for a standardized implementation process across all wards and the need for unique implementation protocols in each ward; and 3) a paradox between the need for a standardized meaning of competency proficiency and the need for flexible and personal competency achievement indicators. CONCLUSIONS: Implementing PGCBME programs involves many challenges, some of which are paradoxical, i.e. two contradictory challenges in which solving one challenge exacerbates another. Revealing these paradoxes is important in navigating them successfully.

More Than Just an Entertainment Show: Identification of Medical Clowns' Communication Skills and Therapeutic Goals.

Medical clowns (MCs) are trained professionals who aim to change the hospital environment through humor. Previous studies focused on their positive impact and began identifying their various skills in specific situations. When placed in pediatrics, MCs face various challenges, including approaching frustrated adolescents who are unwilling to cooperate with their care, dealing with their anxious parents, and communicating in a team in the presence of other health professionals. Research that systematically describes MCs' skills and therapeutic goals in meeting these challenges is limited. This article describes a qualitative, immersion/crystallization study, triangulating between 26 video-recorded simulations and 12 in-depth-semi-structured interviews with MCs. Through an iterative consensus-building process we identified 40 different skills, not limited to humor and entertainment. Four main therapeutic goals emerged: building a relationship, dealing with emotions, enhancing a sense of control, caring, and encouragement, and motivating treatment adherence. Mapping MCs' skills and goals enhances the understanding of MCs' role and actions to illustrate their unique caring practices. This clarification may help other healthcare professionals to recognize their practices and the benefits in involving them in care. Furthermore, other health professionals may apply some of the identified skills when faced with these challenges themselves.

A social ecological approach to promote learning health disparities in the clinical years: impact of a home-visiting educational program for medical students.

BACKGROUND: There is consensus that medical schools have a duty to educate students about social determinants of health (SDOH) and equip them with skills required to ameliorate health disparities. Although the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) urged the development of experiential long term programs, teaching is usually conducted in the pre-clinical years or as voluntary courses. ETGAR a required health disparities course, based on the social ecological model, was initiated to answer the NAM call. This study aimed to ascertain the course impact on students learning of SDOH and health disparities. METHODS: Students during their first clinical year cared for four patients in their transition from hospital back home, one patient in each internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics and obstetrics/gynecology rotation. The students home-visited their patients after meeting them in hospital and preparing a plain language discharge letter. Training session prior to the course, a tutorial in each rotation, and structured feedback gave the educational envelope. Mixed methodology was employed to evaluate the course impact. Quantitative data collected by students during the home-visit: patients' characteristics and quality and safety of the transition back home using the Medication Discrepancy Tool and Care Transition Measure questionnaire. Stakeholders' views were collected via interviews and focus groups with students representing all affiliated hospitals, and interviews with heads of departments most involved in the course. RESULTS: Three hundred six students in three academic years, between October 2016-July 2019, completed home visits for 485 disadvantaged patients with improvement in patients' knowledge of their treatment (3.2 (0.96) vs 3.8 (0.57), Z = -7.12, p < .0001) and identification of medication discrepancies in 42% of visits. Four themes emerged from the qualitative analysis: contribution to learning, experience-based learning, professional identity formation, and course implementation. CONCLUSIONS: ETGAR was perceived to complement hospital-based learning, making students witness the interaction between patients' circumstances and health and exposing them to four patients' environment levels. It provided a didactic framework for promoting awareness to SDOH and tools and behaviors required to ameliorate their impact on health and health disparities. The course combined communication and community learning into traditionally bio-medical clinical years and serves as a model for how social-ecology approaches can be integrated into the curriculum.

Teaching plain language to medical students: improving communication with disadvantaged patients.

BACKGROUND: Low health literacy underpins health inequality and leads to poor adherence to medical care and higher risk of adverse events and rehospitalization. Communication in plain language, therefore, is an essential skill for health professionals to acquire. Most medical education communication skill programs focus on verbal communication, while written communication training is scarce. ETGAR is a student delivered service for vulnerable patients after hospital discharge in which, amongst other duties, students 'translate' the medical discharge letters into plain language and share them with patients at a home visit. This study ascertains how this plain language training impacted on students' written communication skills using a tool designed for purpose. METHODS: Students, in pairs, wrote three plain language discharge letters over the course of a year for patients whom they encountered in hospital. The students handed over and shared the letters with the patients during a post-discharge home visit. Structured feedback from course instructors was given for each letter. An assessment tool was developed to evaluate students' ability to tell the hospitalization narrative using plain and clear language. First and last letters were blindly evaluated for the entire cohort (74 letters; 87 students). RESULTS: Students scored higher in all assessment categories in the third letters, with significant improvement in overall score 3.5 ± 0.8 vs 4.1 ± 0.6 Z = -3.43, p = 0.001. The assessment tool's reliability was high α = 0.797, it successfully differentiated between plain language categories, and its score was not affected by letter length or patient's medical condition. CONCLUSIONS: Plain language discharge letters written for real patients in the context of experience-based learning improved in quality, providing students with skills to work effectively in an environment where poor health literacy is prevalent. ETGAR may serve as a model for learning written communication skills during clinical years, using the assessment tool for formative or summative evaluation.

[COMPETENCY-BASED TRAINING AS A WAY TO CREATE ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AND IMPROVE PROFESSIONALISM: A REVIEW OF THE PROCESS OF IMPLEMENTING A COMPETENCY-BASED MEDICAL EDUCATION (CBME) TRAINING PROGRAM IN NEONATOLOGY FELLOWSHIP IN ISRAEL].

INTRODUCTION: Competency-based medical education (CBME) is a model aimed to address certain challenges and shortcomings attributed to the contemporary models of medical education and the medical profession in general. The CBME model has been used mainly in the education of undergraduate medical students with no continuation to residency, fellowship, or independent practice. In this review, we present a program based on the CBME model for the design and implementation of a new fellowship program in neonatology in Israel. As part of the program, we propose a mentorship program as a means to facilitate the implementation and acceptance of the program in the different wards. We designed assessment tools that can help the mentor track the fellow's development over time as well as to examine the impact of the proposed program on performance and on all stakeholders' satisfaction over time. We aim to evaluate the benefits and effectiveness of this CBME training not only on the fellows' abilities and performance outcomes, but also on the accompanying general organizational changes that can lead to general improvement in the neonatal profession in Israel.

[SIMULATION AS A TRAINING AND ASSESSMENT TOOL FOR COMPETENCY BASED MEDICAL EDUCATION - A REGULATORY CHALLENGE].

INTRODUCTION: Competency Based Medical Education (CBME) is an educational approach that occupies a central place in medical education. Medical education is accountable for the graduates' professional level, ensuring they are skilled and competent in all key areas of their profession. Adopting CBME underscores the importance of simulation-based training. Experiential training provides, among other things: standardization of training, controlled exposure to extreme events and soft skills, such as patient-caregiver communication and teamwork training. Unlike the traditional apprentice approach, accountability reinforces the choice of a preliminary encounter with simulated patients prior to real-life care, as a complimentary tool for improving patient safety. Incorporating a practical exam is self-evident in CBME because of the need to ensure that the examinees are competent to provide unsupervised safe and quality care. Implementation of a national CBME program, likewise, incorporating simulation into national training programs, requires involvement and supervision on health system regulators. In this paper, we describe simulation-based national training programs that to date integrate competency-based training in the various medical sectors. As national programs, they are implemented under the guidance and in cooperation with the regulators. On the one hand, CBME is a new approach and its implementation will require time and the cooperation of many stakeholders. On the other hand, simulation is an existing, well-established training and assessment tool that can be used as an anchor around which you can start building the competency-based training programs.

Pediatric residents' simulation-based training in patient safety during sedation.

In Israeli emergency departments, pediatric residents are allowed to independently perform procedural sedation after training. Preparing the residents to practice unsupervised sedations requires participation in a simulation-based training in patient safety during sedation (STPSDS). The study objective was to evaluate participants' perception of knowledge and confidence from the STPSDS. We performed a retrospective analysis of participants' self-reported perception of knowledge acquisition. At the end of each course, participants were requested to rate, anonymously and independently, the training contribution to their knowledge and confidence using a four-point Likert scale. Between January 2010 and December 2017, 321 pediatric residents participated in 67 STPSDS courses; 315 completed the self-assessments. Participants' median responses of the training contribution were 4 (IQR 3-4) for overall knowledge, 4 (IQR 4-4) for understanding potential complications during sedation, 3 (IQR 3-4) for knowledge in managing adverse events, and 3 (IQR 2-4) for knowledge in practicing safe sedation. Median response for contribution to participants' confidence in performing sedation was 3 (IQR 3-4).Conclusion: We found that the STPSDS improved perception of knowledge and confidence among pediatric residents. Our findings suggest that this training has a valuable role in preparing pediatric residents to practice unsupervised sedations in the ED. What is Known: • In Israel, sedation-trained pediatric residents performed sedations in the Emergency Department • Successful completion of a simulation-based training in patient safety during sedation (STPSDS) is a mandatory requirement to perform unsupervised sedation. What is New: • The STPSDS improved perception of knowledge and confidence among pediatric residents. • This training may be valuable in preparing pediatric residents to practice unsupervised sedations.

Training Physicians toward a Dignifying Approach in Adolescents' Health Care: A Promising Simulation-Based Medical Education Program.

BACKGROUND: Human dignity has a pivotal role within the health care system. There is little experience using simulation-based medical education (SBME) programs that focus on human dignity issues in doctor-patient relationships. OBJECTIVES: To describe and assess a SBME program aimed at improving physicians' competence in a dignifying approach when encountering adolescents and their parents. METHODS: A total of 97 physicians participated in 8 one-day SMBE workshops that included 7 scenarios of typical adolescent health care dilemmas. These issues could be resolved if the physician used an appropriate dignifying approach toward the patient and the parents. Debriefing discussions were based on video recordings of the scenarios. The effect of the workshops on participants' approach to adolescent health care was assessed by a feedback questionnaire and on 5-point Likert score questionnaires administered before the workshop and 3 months after. RESULTS: All participants completed both the pre-workshop and the feedback questionnaires and 41 (42%) completed the post-workshop questionnaire 3 months later. Practice and competence topics received significantly higher scores in post-workshop questionnaires (P < 0.001). A score of high to very high was given by 90% of physicians to the contribution of the workshop to participants understanding the dignifying approach, and by 70% to its influence on their communicative skills. CONCLUSIONS: A one-day simulation-based workshop may improve physicians' communication skills and sense of competence in addressing adolescents' health care issues which require a dignifying approach toward both the adolescent patients and their parents. This dignity-focused methodology may be expanded to improve communication skills of physicians from various disciplines.

Cost-Effectiveness Evaluation of EHR: Simulation of an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm in the Emergency Department.

Health care organizations have installed electronic systems to increase efficiency in health care. Empirically assessing the cost-effectiveness of technologies to the health care system is a challenging and complex task. This study examined cost-effectiveness of additional clinical information supplied via an EHR system by simulating a case of abdominal aortic aneurysm devised and acted professionally by the Israel Center of Medical Simulation. We conducted a simulation-based study on physicians who were asked to treat a simulated patient for the prevalent medical scenario of hip and leg pain that actually corresponded to an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Half of the participating physicians from the Department of Emergency Medicine at Tel-Hashomer Hospital - Israel's largest - had access to an EHR system that integrates medical data from multiple health providers (community and hospitals) in addition to the local health record, and half did not. To model medical decision making, the results of the simulation were combined with a Markov Model within a decision tree. Cost-effectiveness was analyzed by comparing the effects of the admission/discharge decision in units of quality adjusted life years (QALYs) to the estimated costs. The results showed that using EHR in the ED increases the QALY of the patient and improves medical decision-making. The expenditure per patient for one QALY unit as a result of using the EHR was $1229, which is very cost-effective according to many accepted threshold values (less than all these values). Thus, using the EHR contributes to making a cost-effective decision in this specific but prevalent case.

Improving diagnostic accuracy using EHR in emergency departments: A simulation-based study.

It is widely believed that Electronic Health Records (EHR) improve medical decision-making by enabling medical staff to access medical information stored in the system. It remains unclear, however, whether EHR indeed fulfills this claim under the severe time constraints of Emergency Departments (EDs). We assessed whether accessing EHR in an ED actually improves decision-making by clinicians. A simulated ED environment was created at the Israel Center for Medical Simulation (MSR). Four different actors were trained to simulate four specific complaints and behavior and 'consulted' 26 volunteer ED physicians. Each physician treated half of the cases (randomly) with access to EHR, and their medical decisions were compared to those where the physicians had no access to EHR. Comparison of diagnostic accuracy with and without access showed that accessing the EHR led to an increase in the quality of the clinical decisions. Physicians accessing EHR were more highly informed and thus made more accurate decisions. The percentage of correct diagnoses was higher and these physicians were more confident in their diagnoses and made their decisions faster.

Learning social determinants of health through a home visiting course in the clinical years.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of a new experience-based educational program aiming to teach social determinants of health (SDH) and health disparities, through a post-discharge home-visit conducted with patients recruited in hospital. METHODS: 105 clinical-year students visited 177 patients living in disadvantaged circumstances. Their home-visit reports were analyzed employing mixed methodology. Content analysis was conducted for classifying issues raised by students, and quantitative analysis to compare reports by level of elaboration, gender and class. RESULTS: Fifteen taxonomy items were identified. Social support and patients' medical conditions were most prevalent, followed by personal-related and community-related issues. Analysis demonstrated students' understanding of the relationship between SDH and patient health, and challenges patients face following discharge. Women and mixed couples provided more elaborate reports, which contained significantly greater critique of medical care. CONCLUSIONS: Meeting patients both in hospital and at home enhanced awareness of SDH. Students learned to view the patient comprehensively, and to understand the diverse factors affecting their health. Students, who had essentially sole responsibility for the home-visit, successfully integrated their skills to take action when needed. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: The ETGAR experience provided a means for effective learning about how social determinants impact on health.

The coronavirus pandemic and Holocaust survivors in Israel.

Holocaust survivors in Israel and abroad appear to be especially vulnerable to COVID-19 because of their early life history, advanced age, and associated health conditions. And although some survivors may experience retraumatization because of the pandemic, others appear to be especially resilient. We encourage a strength-based approach when working with survivors to foster resilience and effective coping in this uncertain time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

"See One, Sim One, Do One"- A National Pre-Internship Boot-Camp to Ensure a Safer "Student to Doctor" Transition.

INTRODUCTION: The transition for being a medical student to a full functioning intern is accompanied by considerable stress and sense of unpreparedness. Simulation based workshops were previously reported to be effective in improving the readiness of interns and residents to their daily needed skills but only few programs were implemented on a large scale. METHODS: A nationally endorsed and mandated pre-internship simulation based workshop is reported. We hypothesized that this intervention will have a meaningful and sustained impact on trainees' perception of their readiness to internship with regard to patient safety and quality of care skills. Main outcome measure was the workshop's contribution to professional training in general and to critical skills and error prevention in particular, as perceived by participants. RESULTS: Between 2004 and 2011, 85 workshops were conducted for a total of 4,172 trainees. Eight-hundred and six of the 2,700 participants approached by e-mail, returned feedback evaluation forms, which were analyzed. Eighty five percent of trainees perceived the workshop as an essential component of their professional training, and 87% agreed it should be mandatory. These ratings peaked during internship and were generally sustained 3 years following the workshop. Contribution to emergency care skills was especially highly ranked (83%). CONCLUSION: Implementation of a mandatory, simulation-based, pre-internship workshop on a national scale made a significant perceived impact on interns and residents. The sustained impact should encourage adopting this approach to facilitate the student to doctor transition.

Innovative integrative bedside teaching model improves tutors' self-assessments of teaching skills and attitudes.

INTRODUCTION: Patient bedside is the ideal setting for teaching physical examination, medical interviewing, and interpersonal skills. Herein we describe a novel model for bedside teaching (BST) practiced during tutor training workshop and its resulting effect on practitioners' self assessment of teaching skills and perceptions. METHODS: One-day tutor training workshop included theoretical knowledge supplementation regarding tutors' roles as well as implementing practical tools for clinical education, mainly BST model. The model, which emphasizes simultaneous clinical and communication teaching in a stepwise approach, was practiced by consecutive simulations with a gradual escalation of difficulty and adjusted instruction approaches. Pre- and post-workshop-adjusted questionnaires using a Likert scale of 1 to 4 were completed by participants and compared. RESULTS: Analysis was based on 25 out of 48 participants who completed both questionnaires. Significantly improved teaching skills were demonstrated upon workshop completion (mean 3.3, SD 0.5) compared with pre-training (mean 2.6, SD 0.6; p<0.001) with significant increase in most examined parameters. Significantly improved tutor's roles internalization was demonstrated after training completion (mean 3.7, SD 0.3) compared with pre-workshop (mean 3.5 SD 0.5; p=0.002). DISCUSSION: Successful BST involves combination of clinical and communication skills. BST model practiced during the workshop may contribute to improved teaching skills in this challenging environment.

The impact of residents' training in Electronic Medical Record (EMR) use on their competence: report of a pragmatic trial.

OBJECTIVES: Even though Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) are increasingly used in healthcare organizations there is surprisingly little theoretical work or educational programs in this field. This study is aimed at comparing two training programs for doctor-patient-computer communication (DPCC). METHODS: 36 Family Medicine Residents (FMRs) participated in this study. All FMRs went through twelve identical simulated encounters, six pre and six post training. The experiment group received simulation based training (SBT) while the control group received traditional lecture based training. RESULTS: Performance, attitude and sense of competence of all FMRs improved, but no difference was found between the experiment and control groups. FMRs from the experiment group evaluated the contribution of the training phase higher than control group, and showed higher satisfaction. CONCLUSION: We assume that the mere exposure to simulation served as a learning experience and enabled deliberate practice that was more powerful than training. Because DPCC is a new field, all participants in such studies, including instructors and raters, should receive basic training of DPCC skills. PRACTICE IMPLICATION: Simulation enhances DPCC skills. Future studies of this kind should control the exposure to simulation prior to the training phase. Training and assessment of clinical communication should include EMR related skills.