Faculty Bibliography

The transitional period between hospital discharge and primary care follow-up is a vulnerable time for patients that can result in adverse health outcomes and preventable hospital readmissions. This is especially true for patients of safety-net hospitals (SNHs) who often struggle to secure primary care access when leaving the hospital due to social, economic and cultural barriers. In this study, we describe a resident-led postdischarge clinic that serves patients discharged from NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, an urban safety-net academic hospital. In our multivariable analysis, there was no statistical difference in the readmission rate between those who completed the transitional care management and those who did not (OR 1.32 (0.75-2.36), p=0.336), but there was a statistically significant increase in primary care provider (PCP) engagement (OR 0.53 (0.45-0.62), p<0.001). Overall, this study describes a postdischarge clinic model embedded in a resident clinic in an urban SNH that is associated with increased PCP engagement, but no reduction in 30-day hospital readmissions.

Precision education (PE) uses personalized educational interventions to empower trainees and improve learning outcomes. While PE has the potential to represent a paradigm shift in medical education, a theoretical foundation to guide the effective implementation of PE strategies has not yet been described. Here, the authors introduce a theoretical foundation for the implementation of PE, integrating key learning theories with the digital tools that allow them to be operationalized. Specifically, the authors describe how the master adaptive learner (MAL) model, transformative learning theory, and self-determination theory can be harnessed in conjunction with nudge strategies and audit and feedback dashboards to drive learning and meaningful behavior change. The authors also provide practical examples of these theories and tools in action by describing precision interventions already in use at one academic medical center, concretizing PE's potential in the current clinical environment. These examples illustrate how a firm theoretical grounding allows educators to most effectively tailor PE interventions to fit individual learners' needs and goals, facilitating efficient learning and, ultimately, improving patient and health system outcomes.

BACKGROUND:Experiential learning through patient care is fundamental to graduate medical education. Despite this, the actual content to which trainees are exposed in clinical practice is difficult to quantify and is poorly characterized. There remains an unmet need to define precisely how residents' patient care activities inform their educational experience.  METHODS: Using a recently-described crosswalk tool, we mapped principal ICD-10 discharge diagnosis codes to American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) content at four training hospitals of a single Internal Medicine (IM) Residency Program over one academic year to characterize and compare residents' clinical educational experiences. Frequencies of broad content categories and more specific condition categories were compared across sites to profile residents' aggregate inpatient clinical experiences and drive curricular change. RESULTS:There were 18,604 discharges from inpatient resident teams during the study period. The crosswalk captured > 95% of discharges at each site. Infectious Disease (ranging 17.4 to 39.5% of total discharges) and Cardiovascular Disease (15.8 to 38.2%) represented the most common content categories at each site. Several content areas (Allergy/Immunology, Dermatology, Obstetrics/Gynecology, Ophthalmology, Otolaryngology/Dental Medicine) were notably underrepresented (≤ 1% at each site). There were significant differences in the frequencies of conditions within most content categories, suggesting that residents experience distinct site-specific clinical content during their inpatient training. CONCLUSIONS:There were substantial differences in the clinical content experienced by our residents across hospital sites, prompting several important programmatic and curricular changes to enrich our residents' hospital-based educational experiences.

PROBLEM/OBJECTIVE:Internal medicine training programs operate under the assumption that the three-year residency training period is sufficient for trainees to achieve the depth and breadth of clinical experience necessary for independent practice; however, the medical conditions to which residents are exposed in clinical practice are not easily measured. As a result, residents' clinical educational experiences are poorly understood. APPROACH/METHODS:A crosswalk tool (a repository of international classification of diseases [ICD]-10 codes linked to medical content areas) was developed to query routinely collected inpatient principal diagnosis codes and translate them into an educationally meaningful taxonomy. This tool provides a robust characterization of residents' inpatient clinical experiences. OUTCOMES/RESULTS:This pilot study has provided proof of principle that the crosswalk tool can effectively map one year of resident-attributed diagnosis codes to both the broad content category level (for example "Cardiovascular Disease") and to the more specific condition category level (for example "Myocardial Disease"). The authors uncovered content areas in their training program that are overrepresented and some that are underrepresented relative to material on the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Certification Exam. NEXT STEPS/UNASSIGNED:The crosswalk tool introduced here translated residents' patient care activities into discrete, measurable educational content and enabled one internal medicine residency training program to characterize residents' inpatient educational experience with a high degree of resolution. Leaders of other programs seeking to profile the clinical exposure of their trainees may adopt this strategy. Such clinical content mapping drives innovation in the experiential curriculum, enables comparison across practice sites, and lays the groundwork to test associations between individual clinical exposure and competency-based outcomes, which, in turn, will allow medical educators to draw conclusions regarding how clinical experience reflects clinical competency.

Introduction/UNASSIGNED:Virtual urgent care (VUC) provides real-time evaluation, triage, and treatment of low-acuity medical problems; however, VUC physicians have varying levels of telemedicine training. We created a workplace-based experiential onboarding program that deployed standardized patients (SPs) into a VUC clinic to evaluate and deliver feedback to independently practicing physicians, providing quality assurance and identifying areas for improvement. Methods/UNASSIGNED:SPs evaluated communication, disease-specific, and telemedicine skills by observing behaviors. We surveyed participants to evaluate the program. Results/UNASSIGNED:= 34%) well done-highlighting specific behaviors most ripe for improvement. All queried participants indicated that this simulation improved communication and telemedicine skills. Discussion/UNASSIGNED:This workplace-based experiential onboarding program uncovered knowledge gaps within telemedicine skills and patient education domains. Identification of these gaps can help drive new virtual care curricula.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically disrupted the educational experience of medical trainees. However, a detailed characterization of exactly how trainees' clinical experiences have been affected is lacking. Here, we profile residents' inpatient clinical experiences across the four training hospitals of NYU's Internal Medicine Residency Program during the pandemic's first wave. We mined ICD-10 principal diagnosis codes attributed to residents from February 1, 2020, to May 31, 2020. We translated these codes into discrete medical content areas using a newly developed "crosswalk tool." Residents' clinical exposure was enriched in infectious diseases (ID) and cardiovascular disease content at baseline. During the pandemic's surge, ID became the dominant content area. Exposure to other content was dramatically reduced, with clinical diversity repopulating only toward the end of the study period. Such characterization can be leveraged to provide effective practice habits feedback, guide didactic and self-directed learning, and potentially predict competency-based outcomes for trainees in the COVID era.

Background/UNASSIGNED:During the rapid onset of the pandemic, clinicians transitioned from traditional outpatient practice to virtual modalities for providing routine care to patient panels. Like training programs nationwide, telemedicine training and assessment had not been systematically incorporated into our residency. In response, a scheduled Internal Medicine (IM) Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) was adapted to a remote modality to become virtual care-focused learning experience for trainees and to provide valuable feedback to educators. Methods/UNASSIGNED:Standardized Patients (SPs) rated residents on their communication (including information gathering, relationship development and patient education), patient activation and satisfaction, and telemedicine skills. Analyses included a comparison of domain scores for residents who participated in both the 2020 remote and 2019 in-person OSCEs, and a review of written resident comments about the virtual OSCE. Results/UNASSIGNED: = .008). Conclusion/UNASSIGNED:Our reformulated OSCE accomplished 3 goals including; (1) physically distancing residents from SPs per COVID regulations, (2) providing residents with the opportunity to practice critical virtual visit skills, and (3) alerting our educators to curricular improvement areas. Our methods are useful for other institutions and have applications to the larger medical education community.

BACKGROUND: During the rapid onset of the pandemic, clinicians transitioned from traditional outpatient practice to telemedicine for triaging COVID-19 patients and providing routine care to patient panels. Telemedicine training and assessment had not been systematically incorporated into most residencies. In response, a scheduled Internal Medicine (IM) Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) was adapted to a telemedicineemphasized, virtual modality to become a just-in- time learning experience for trainees.
METHOD(S): Remote cases deployed on common web-based video conference platform included; (1) a potential COVID-19 triage, (2) educating on buprenorphine maintenance, (2) counselling on mammogram screening, and (3) addressing frustration with electronic health record documentation. Simulated Patients (SPs) rated residents on communication skills, patient activation and satisfaction, and case-specific telemedicine items. Analyses included a comparison of domain scores (mean % well done) for residents who participated in both the 2020 remote and 2019 in-person OSCEs, and a review of written resident feedback.
RESULT(S): Fewer than half (46%) of 2020's residents (n=23) performed well on the COVID-19 case's telemedicine skill domain. Residents excelled in using nonverbal communication to enrich on-camera communication (100%), but struggled with virtual physical exams (13%), gathering information (4%), and optimizing technology (4%). Residents expressed interest in more opportunity to practice telemedicine skills going forward. Residents' overall COVID-19 knowledge was fair (54% of items were rated as 'well done'). Fewer than half (45%) advised the SP that testing was not available at the time, but that he should call the city hotline for information, and about half (55%) provided quarantine/ home care instructions. In comparing 2020 (virtual) to 2019 (in-person) OSCE scores, residents who participated in both assessments (n=9) performed similarly on communication skills including information gathering (84% vs. 83%), and relationship development (93% vs. 92%), patient satisfaction (72% vs. 80%) and activation (65% vs. 66%). Patient education scores were significantly lower during the virtual OSCE (40% vs. 76%, P=.008).
CONCLUSION(S): Our reformulated OSCE accomplished three goals: (1) physically distancing residents from SPs, (2) providing residents the opportunity to practice critical telemedicine skills, and (3) alerting our educators to curricular improvement areas in virtual physical exam, patient education, gathering information and optimizing technology. Our methods are scalable at other institutions and have applications to the larger medical and clinical education community. LEARNING OBJECTIVE #1: Describe challenges and barriers to effective communication and clinical skill utilization during televisits. LEARNING OBJECTIVE #2: Understand resident physician practice patterns and communication regarding infectious disease

LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1: Characterize internal medicine resident's inpatient clinical exposure across public, private, federal and community hospital settings. LEARNING OBJECTIVES 2: Identify disparities in resident's clinical exposure across sites to guide curriculum development and rational rotation scheduling. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Experiential learning through patient care is the primary means by which Internal Medicine (IM) residents mature. Despite this, there is an unmet need to characterize how residents' diverse patient care activities inform their educational experience. This is especially true at NYU's IM Residency, which comprises over 200 residents across four distinct hospital systems, exposing residents to diverse, and often variable clinical content. We have previously described a 'crosswalk tool' which maps ICD10 diagnosis codes to one of 16 American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) medical content areas and one of 178 specific condition categories, to better characterize clinical exposure. Here, we translate resident-attributed principal ICD-10 discharge diagnosis codes from each of our Program's four training hospitals in Quarter 1 of AY2020 to profile the educational experience of residents at each site. DESCRIPTION: From July 1-Sept 30 2020, we mined principal ICD10 discharge diagnosis codes from resident teams at Bellevue Hospital (BH), a large public hospital; NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn (NYU-BK), an academic community hospital; NYU Lang one Hospitals-Manhattan (NYUMN), a large quaternary hospital; and VA NY Harbor Healthcare-Manhattan (VA), a Veteran's Affairs Hospital. We then applied diagnosis codes to the crosswalk tool to translate ICD10 codes into broad ABIM content areas and specific condition categories, yielding site-specific clinical content maps. EVALUATION: At each site there was notable enrichment in two specific content areas-Infectious Disease (ID) and Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD). However, there were striking differences in the frequency of these content areas across sites. Roughly 28% of all diagnoses fell under ID at NYU-BK and NYU-MN, with half that frequency at BH and VA. CVD diagnoses represented 40% of diagnoses at VA, while only 20% at NYU-BK, 25% at NYU-MN, and 30% at BH. For reference, CVD represents 14% and ID 9% of content on theABIM Certification Exam. There were uniformly low frequencies (<1%) of several less typical ABIM content areas, namely Optho, Derm, Allergy/ Immuno, OB/GYN, and ENT/Dental Med. The frequency of Psychiatry diagnoses, which houses substance use, was markedly higher at BH and NYU-BK than the other sites. There were several substantial differences in condition categories across sites, most notably within 'bacteremia and sepsis syndromes' and 'ischemic heart disease.' DISCUSSION / REFLECTION / LESSONS LEARNED: In this pilot we translate discharge data from four distinct hospital systems into an educational framework to characterize our resident's educational experience and in doing so unmask disparities in exposure that could drive rational changes in rotation schedules and didactic content selection