Promotion Preparation Tips for Academic Family Medicine Educators.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Promotion has historically valued the scholarship of discovery over the scholarship of teaching. The clinician-educator promotion pathway is an attractive option for academic family physicians engaged in significant teaching. However, clinician-educators are less often promoted than peers on other tracks. Family medicine educators face unique challenges in promotion due to clinical requirements and often less guidance on how to meet promotion criteria. Promotion recognizes achievements of faculty and is often tied to higher base salary. We aimed to identify promotion preparation tips for academic family medicine educators. METHODS: We surveyed members of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Medical Student Education Collaborative electronically on promotion preparation lessons learned in (1) curriculum vitae preparation, (2) personal statement preparation, (3) selecting external reviewers, and (4) identifying measurable achievements. This qualitative study used grounded theory and constant comparison. RESULTS: Fourteen individuals from 13 medical institutions responded with tips for success in promotion preparation. The tips identified actionable steps for promotion preparation of academic family medicine educators. Several main themes emerged, including the importance of timely and thorough documentation, detailed planning, and being knowledgeable about institutional-specific criteria early. CONCLUSIONS: The tips provided in this study support family medicine educators in preparing for promotion and can be used as a tool for mentors, chairs and faculty development.

Launching a Statewide COVID-19 Primary Care Hotline and Telemedicine Service.

To respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and recover from its aftermath, primary care teams will face waves of overwhelming demand for information and the need to significantly transform care delivery. INNOVATION: Oregon Health & Science University's primary care team envisioned and implemented the COVID-19 Connected Care Center, a statewide telephone "hotline" service. RESULTS: The hotline has taken more than 5825 calls from patients in 33 of Oregon's 36 counties in less than 3 months. In preliminary survey data, 86% of patients said their questions were answered during the call, 90% would recommend this service, and 70% reported a reduction in stress levels about coronavirus. In qualitative interviews, patients reported their questions answered, short wait times, nurses spent time as needed, and appropriate follow-up was arranged. CONCLUSION: Academic health centers may have the capacity to leverage their extensive resources to rapidly launch a multiphased pandemic response that meets peoples' need for information and access to primary care, while minimizing risk of infection and emergency department use and rapidly supporting primary care teams to make the necessary operational changes to do the same in their communities. Such efforts require external funding in a fee-for-service payment model.

Design and Implementation of a Competency-Based Family Medicine Clerkship Curriculum.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Competency-based medical education (CBME) has been incorporated into graduate medical education accreditation and is being introduced in undergraduate medical education. Family medicine (FM) faculty at one institution developed a CBME FM clerkship to intentionally maintain the integrity of FM specialty-specific teaching during their institutional CBME curricular revision. METHODS: From the five FM domains (Access to Care, Continuity of Care, Comprehensive Care, Coordination of Care, and Contextual Care), 10 competencies and 23 FM educational activities (EAs) were defined. The set of EAs encompasses the wide scope of care available to FM clerkship students. Students complete four required EAs (preventive care, care transitions, chronic disease management, and acute care) and select four additional EAs matching their interests. EA selection frequency and course evaluations were assessed for the first cohort of learners (N=156; February 2016-July 2017). RESULTS: The most frequently selected EAs were: information coordination, procedures, and care of the family. The least selected were: patient e-communication, end-of-life care, and shared medical decision making. Student perceptions of the experience were strong prior to and after implementation. CONCLUSIONS: Having both required and selective EAs ensures a robust FM experience tailored to students' interests. The FM CBME curriculum allowed comparable clinical experiences despite variations in clinical sites and preceptor scope. Because of its breadth, FM is uniquely suited to address multiple competencies; this demonstrates the educational value of required FM clerkships to institutional leaders interested in implementing CBME curriculum. The CBME framework can provide a structure for more intentional student-clinic assignments based on EAs available at specific sites.

Insomnia Telemedicine OSCE (TeleOSCE): A Simulated Standardized Patient Video-Visit Case for Clerkship Students.

Introduction: Telemedicine is a growing practice with minimal training in US medical schools. Telemedicine OSCE (TeleOSCE) simulations allow students to practice this type of patient interaction in a standardized way. Methods: The Insomnia-Rural TeleOSCE was implemented as part of a required clinical clerkship for students in their second, third, or fourth year of medical school. This case addressed a patient with depression in a medically underserved area. Students performed it as a formative experience and received immediate feedback. They then completed a survey to evaluate the experience. Results: Students (n = 287) rated the quality of the experience 7.59 out of 10. Comments showed that 61 learners thought the TeleOSCE was a positive experience, 35 wanted more teaching about telemedicine, 28 improved their understanding of barriers to care, 25 expressed concern over minimal other training, 23 found the TeleOSCE important and challenging, 16 appreciated the differences between in-person and remote visits, and 15 wanted fewer distractions. Eight students worried about how they would be judged, five learned from the technical limitations, five requested more time, five were skeptical of the utility, and five saw telemedicine as triage. Discussion: The TeleOSCE allows learners to gain exposure to telemedicine in a safe simulated teaching environment and assesses learner competencies. The TeleOSCE also improves students' understanding of barriers to care and the utility of telemedicine. It logistically allows faculty to directly assess distance students on their clinical reasoning and patient communication skills.

The Electronic Health Record Objective Structured Clinical Examination: Assessing Student Competency in Patient Interactions While Using the Electronic Health Record.

PROBLEM: Because many medical students do not have access to electronic health records (EHRs) in the clinical environment, simulated EHR training is necessary. Explicitly training medical students to use EHRs appropriately during patient encounters equips them to engage patients while also attending to the accuracy of the record and contributing to a culture of information safety. APPROACH: Faculty developed and successfully implemented an EHR objective structured clinical examination (EHR-OSCE) for clerkship students at two institutions. The EHR-OSCE objectives include assessing EHR-related communication and data management skills. OUTCOMES: The authors collected performance data for students (n = 71) at the first institution during academic years 2011-2013 and for students (n = 211) at the second institution during academic year 2013-2014. EHR-OSCE assessment checklist scores showed that students performed well in EHR-related communication tasks, such as maintaining eye contact and stopping all computer work when the patient expresses worry. Findings indicated student EHR skill deficiencies in the areas of EHR data management including medical history review, medication reconciliation, and allergy reconciliation. Most students' EHR skills failed to improve as the year progressed, suggesting that they did not gain the EHR training and experience they need in clinics and hospitals. NEXT STEPS: Cross-institutional data comparisons will help determine whether differences in curricula affect students' EHR skills. National and institutional policies and faculty development are needed to ensure that students receive adequate EHR education, including hands-on experience in the clinic as well as simulated EHR practice.

Tools to Assess Behavioral and Social Science Competencies in Medical Education: A Systematic Review.

PURPOSE: Behavioral and social science (BSS) competencies are needed to provide quality health care, but psychometrically validated measures to assess these competencies are difficult to find. Moreover, they have not been mapped to existing frameworks, like those from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) and Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). This systematic review aimed to identify and evaluate the quality of assessment tools used to measure BSS competencies. METHOD: The authors searched the literature published between January 2002 and March 2014 for articles reporting psychometric or other validity/reliability testing, using OVID, CINAHL, PubMed, ERIC, Research and Development Resource Base, SOCIOFILE, and PsycINFO. They reviewed 5,104 potentially relevant titles and abstracts. To guide their review, they mapped BSS competencies to existing LCME and ACGME frameworks. The final included articles fell into three categories: instrument development, which were of the highest quality; educational research, which were of the second highest quality; and curriculum evaluation, which were of lower quality. RESULTS: Of the 114 included articles, 33 (29%) yielded strong evidence supporting tools to assess communication skills, cultural competence, empathy/compassion, behavioral health counseling, professionalism, and teamwork. Sixty-two (54%) articles yielded moderate evidence and 19 (17%) weak evidence. Articles mapped to all LCME standards and ACGME core competencies; the most common was communication skills. CONCLUSIONS: These findings serve as a valuable resource for medical educators and researchers. More rigorous measurement validation and testing and more robust study designs are needed to understand how educational strategies contribute to BSS competency development.

The feasibility and acceptability of administering a telemedicine objective structured clinical exam as a solution for providing equivalent education to remote and rural learners.

INTRODUCTION: Although many medical schools incorporate distance learning into their curricula, assessing students at a distance can be challenging. While some assessments are relatively simple to administer to remote students, other assessments, such as objective structured clinical exams (OSCEs) are not. This article describes a means to more effectively and efficiently assess distance learners and evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of the assessment. METHODS: We developed a teleOSCE, administered online in real time, to two cohorts of students on a rural clerkship rotation and assessed the feasibility and acceptability of using such an approach to assess medical students' clinical skills at rural locations. Project feasibility was defined as having development and implementation costs of less than $5000. Project acceptability was determined by analyzing student interview transcripts. A qualitative case study design framework was chosen due to the novel nature of the activity. RESULTS: The implementation cost of the teleOSCE was approximately US$1577.20, making it a feasible educational endeavor. Interview data indicated the teleOSCE was also acceptable to students. CONCLUSIONS: The teleOSCE format may be useful to other institutions as a method to centrally administer clinical skills exams for assessment of distance medical students.

Development and use of an instrument adapted to assess the clinical skills learning environment in the pre-clinical years.

BACKGROUND: The Communication, Curriculum, and Culture (C3) instrument is a well-established survey for measuring the professional learning climate or hidden curriculum in the clinical years of medical school. However, few instruments exist for assessing professionalism in the pre-clinical years. We adapted the C3 instrument and assessed its utility during the pre-clinical years at two U.S. medical schools. METHODS: The ten-item Pre-Clinical C3 survey was adapted from the C3 instrument. Surveys were administered at the conclusion of the first and second years of medical school using a repeated cross-sectional design. Factor analysis was performed and Cronbach's alphas were calculated for emerging dimensions. RESULTS: The authors collected 458 and 564 surveys at two medical schools during AY06-07 and AY07-09 years, respectively. Factor analysis of the survey data revealed nine items in three dimensions: "Patients as Objects", "Talking Respectfully of Colleagues", and "Patient-Centered Behaviors". Reliability measures (Cronbach's alpha) for the Pre-Clinical C3 survey data were similar to those of the C3 survey for comparable dimensions for each school. Gender analysis revealed significant differences in all three dimensions. CONCLUSIONS: The Pre-Clinical C3 instrument's performance was similar to the C3 instrument in measuring dimensions of professionalism. As medical education moves toward earlier and more frequent clinical and inter-professional educational experiences, the Pre-Clinical C3 instrument may be especially useful in evaluating the impact of curricular revisions.

A Family Medicine Health Technology Strategy for Achieving the Triple Aim for US Health Care.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Health information technology (health IT) and health technology, more broadly, offer tremendous promise for connecting, synthesizing, and sharing information critical to improving health care delivery, reducing health system costs, and achieving personal and community health. While efforts to spur adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) among US practices and hospitals have been highly successful, aspirations for effective data exchanges and translation of data into measureable improvements in health outcomes remain largely unrealized. There are shining examples of health enhancement through new technologies, and the discipline of family medicine is well poised to take advantage of these innovations to improve patient and population health. The Future of Family Medicine led to important family medicine health IT initiatives over the past decade. For example, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Center for Health Information Technology and the Robert Graham Center provided important leadership for informing health IT policy and standard-setting, such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services EHR incentives programs (often referred to as "meaningful use."). As we move forward, there is a need for a new and more comprehensive family medicine strategy for technology. To inform the Family Medicine for America's Health (FMAHealth) initiative, this paper explores strategies and tactics that family medicine could pursue to improve the utility of technology for primary care and to help primary care become a leader in rapid development, testing, and implementation of new technologies. These strategies were also designed with a broader stakeholder audience in mind, intending to reach beyond the work being done by FMAHealth. Specific suggestions include: a shared primary care health IT center, meaningful primary care quality measures and capacity to assess/report them, increased primary care technology research, a national family medicine registry, enhancement of family physicians' technology leadership, and championing patient-centered technology functionality.

Beyond information retrieval and electronic health record use: competencies in clinical informatics for medical education.

Physicians in the 21st century will increasingly interact in diverse ways with information systems, requiring competence in many aspects of clinical informatics. In recent years, many medical school curricula have added content in information retrieval (search) and basic use of the electronic health record. However, this omits the growing number of other ways that physicians are interacting with information that includes activities such as clinical decision support, quality measurement and improvement, personal health records, telemedicine, and personalized medicine. We describe a process whereby six faculty members representing different perspectives came together to define competencies in clinical informatics for a curriculum transformation process occurring at Oregon Health & Science University. From the broad competencies, we also developed specific learning objectives and milestones, an implementation schedule, and mapping to general competency domains. We present our work to encourage debate and refinement as well as facilitate evaluation in this area.

Simulated electronic health record (Sim-EHR) curriculum: teaching EHR skills and use of the EHR for disease management and prevention.

Electronic health records (EHRs) can improve many aspects of patient care, yet few formal EHR curricula exist to teach optimal use to students and other trainees. The Simulated EHR (Sim-EHR) curriculum was introduced in January 2011 at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) to provide learners with a safe hands-on environment in which to apply evidence-based guidelines while learning EHR skills. Using an EHR training platform identical to the OHSU EHR system, learners review and correct a simulated medical chart for a complex virtual patient with chronic diseases and years of fragmented care. They write orders and prescriptions, create an evidence-based plan of care for indicated disease prevention and management, and review their work in a small-group setting. Third-year students complete the Sim-EHR curriculum as part of the required family medicine clerkship; their chart work is assessed using a rubric tied to the curriculum's general and specific objectives. As of January 2014, 406 third-year OHSU medical students, on campus or at remote clerkship sites, and 21 OHSU internal medicine interns had completed simulated charts.In this article, the authors describe the development and implementation of the Sim-EHR curriculum, with a focus on use of the curriculum in the family medicine clerkship. They also share preliminary findings and lessons learned. They suggest that the Sim-EHR curriculum is an effective, interactive method for providing learners with EHR skills education while demonstrating how a well-organized chart helps ensure safe, efficient, and quality patient care.

Surgery clerkship evaluations drive improved professionalism.

PURPOSE: To determine whether a brief student survey can differentiate among third-year clerkship student's professionalism experiences and whether sharing specific feedback with surgery faculty and residents can lead to improvements. METHODS: Medical students completed a survey on professionalism at the conclusion of each third-year clerkship specialty rotation during academic years 2007-2010. RESULTS: Comparisons of survey items in 2007-2008 revealed significantly lower ratings for the surgery clerkship on both Excellence (F = 10.75, p < 0.001) and Altruism/Respect (F = 15.59, p < 0.001) subscales. These data were shared with clerkship directors, prompting the surgery department to discuss student perceptions of professionalism with faculty and residents. Postmeeting ratings of surgery professionalism significantly improved on both Excellence and Altruism/Respect dimensions (p < 0.005 for each). CONCLUSIONS: A brief survey can be used to measure student perceptions of professionalism and an intervention as simple as a surgery department openly sharing results and communicating expectations appears to drive positive change in student experiences.

Medical student exposure to components of the patient-centered medical home during required ambulatory clerkship rotations: implications for education.

PURPOSE: To determine the extent to which third-year medical students are exposed to elements of the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) during required family medicine (FM) clerkships and how this exposure varies among a sample of medical schools. METHOD: In 2008, the authors conducted a cross-sectional survey of 104 ambulatory teaching practices that host required third-year FM clerkship students from nine U.S. medical schools. Descriptive statistics characterized learning settings and the status of PCMH features, and generalized linear mixed models examined variation among medical schools (as the 104 clinics were nested within nine medical schools). RESULTS: Participating schools captured data on 104 eligible clerkship sites (44%). These practices were primarily community-based, single-specialty clinics (n = 48; 46%), and more than half (n = 55; 53%) were part of integrated health systems. Electronic health records (EHRs) were in place in 60 (58%), and no significant difference existed in EHR use according to medical school, despite up to a 10-fold variation from school to school in other PCMH features. Among sites with EHRs, 8 (14%) did not allow access to medical students. Preceptor attitudes about how practice transformation and new information technology are affecting the quality of medical education differ widely from site to site. CONCLUSIONS: Primary care transformation toward the PCMH is already well under way in a national sample of FM teaching sites, and this transformation is having important effects on medical student education.

Counseling on early childhood concerns: sleep issues, thumb sucking, picky eating, and school readiness.

Sleep issues, thumb sucking, coping with picky eating, and determining if a child is ready for school are common concerns of families with young children. Information and resources to help counsel on these topics include recommendations from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the American Dental Association, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Infant sleep times can be prolonged by unmodified or graduated extinction, maintaining routines, scheduled awakenings, and parent education. Thumb sucking can be addressed with positive reinforcement, alternative comfort measures, reminders, and child involvement in solutions. Worry about picky eating can be eased by educating parents about the dietary requirements of toddlers. Social and emotional factors most influence kindergarten success. Keeping children from starting school may not be in their best interest academically.

Clinical inquiries. What are appropriate screening tests for infants and children?

There is adequate evidence for screening neonates for hemoglobinopathies, congenital hypothyroidism, phenylketonuria (strength of recommendation [SOR]: A), and cystic fibrosis (SOR: B). Vision screening should be done for those younger than age 5 years (SOR: B). High-risk children should be tested for tuberculosis (TB) (SOR: B) and lead toxicity (SOR: B). Few data exist to guide frequency and timing of these screening tests, so the following timing recommendations are based on consensus opinion (SOR: C): test for visual acuity yearly starting at age 3 years; test for TB and lead once between the ages of 9 and 12 months, and repeat for high risk or exposure.