Faculty Bibliography

PURPOSE: Patient education is critical in ensuring patient compliance and good health outcomes. Fellows must be able to effectively communicate with their patients, delivering enough information for the patient to understand their medical problem and maximize patient compliance. We created an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) with four liver disease cases to assess fellows' knowledge and ability to inform standardized patients about their clinical condition. METHODS: We developed four cases highlighting different aspects of liver disease and created a four station OSCE: hepatitis B, acute hepatitis C, new diagnosis of cirrhosis, and an end-stage cirrhotic non transplant candidate. The standardized patient (SP) with hepatitis B was minimizing the fact that she could not read English. The acute hepatitis C SP was a nursing student who is afraid that having hepatitis C might jeopardize her career. The SP with the new diagnosis of alcoholic cirrhosis needed to stop drinking, and the end-stage liver disease patient had to grapple with his advanced directives. Twelve fellows from four GI training programs participated. Our focus was to assess the fellows' knowledge about liver diseases and the ACGME competencies of health literacy, shared decision making, advanced directives and goals of care. The goal for the fellows was to communicate effectively with the SPs, and acknowledge that each patient had an emotionally charged issue to overcome. The SPs used a checklist to rate fellow's performance. Faculty and the SPs observed the cases and provided feedback. The fellows were surveyed on their performance regarding the case. RESULTS: The majority of fellows were able to successfully summarize findings and discuss a plan with the patient in the new diagnosis of cirrhosis (76.92%) and hepatitis C case (100%), but were less successful in the hepatitis B (30.77%) and end-of-life case (41.67%). Overall, a small percentage of fellows reflected that they did a good job (22-33%), except at the end-of-life case (67%). The fellows' greatest challenge was trying to cover a lot of information in a single outpatient visit. CONCLUSION: Caring for patients with liver diseases can be complex and time consuming. The patients and fellows' observations were discordant in several areas: for example. the fellows believed they excelled in the end-of-life case, but the SP thought only a small percentage of fellows were able to successfully summarize and discuss the plan. This discrepancy and others highlight important areas of focus in training programs. OSCEs are important to help the fellows facilitate striking the right balance of information delivery and empathy, and this will lead to better patient education, compliance, rapport, and satisfaction.

BACKGROUND: Opioid analgesics are effective and appropriate therapy for many types of acute pain. Epidemiologic evidence supports a direct relationship between increased opioid prescribing and increases in opioid use disorders and overdoses. OBJECTIVE: To tailor our residency curriculum, we designed and fielded an unannounced standardized patient (USP) case involving a patient with acute back pain who is requesting Vicodin (5/325 mg). We describe residents' case management and examine whether their management decisions, including opioid prescribing, were related to their core clinical skills. METHODS: Results are based on 50 (USP) visits with residents in 2 urban primary care clinics. Highly trained USPs portrayed a patient with acute lower back pain who was taking leftover Vicodin with effective pain relief but was running out. We describe how residents managed this case, using both USP report and chart review data, and compare summary clinical skills scores between those who prescribed Vicodin and those who did not. RESULTS: Of the 50 residents, 18 prescribed Vicodin (10-60 pills). Among those who did not prescribe (32/50), most (50%) prescribed ibuprofen. Eighty-three percent of the prescribers and 72% of nonprescribers ordered physical therapy (nonsignificant). Of the 18 prescribers, 13 documented checking the prescription monitoring database. Prescribers had significantly better communication scores than nonprescribers (relationship development: 80% vs. 58% well done, P = .029; patient education: 59% vs. 31% well done, P = .018). Assessment summary scores were also higher (60% vs. 46%) but not significantly (P = .060). Patient satisfaction and activation scores were higher in the prescribers than nonprescribers (71% vs. 39%, P = .004 and 48% vs. 26%, P = .034, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Most Vicodin prescribers did not follow prescribing guidelines, and they demonstrated better communication and assessment skills than the nonprescribers. Results suggest the need to guide residents in using a systematic approach to prescribing opioids safely and to develop an acceptable alternative pain management plan when they decide against prescribing.

AIM: To assess first-year gastroenterology fellows' ability to address difficult interpersonal situations in the workplace using objective structured clinical examinations (OSCE). METHODS: Two OSCEs ("distracted care team" and "frazzled intern") were created to assess response to disruptive behavior. In case 1, a fellow used a colonoscopy simulator while interacting with a standardized patient (SP), nurse, and attending physician all played by actors. The nurse and attending were instructed to display specific disruptive behavior and disregard the fellow unless requested to stop the disruptive behavior and focus on the patient and procedure. In case 2, the fellow was to calm an intern managing a patient with massive gastrointestinal bleeding. The objective in both scenarios was to assess the fellows' ability to perform their duties while managing the disruptive behavior displayed by the actor. The SPs used checklists to rate fellows' performances. The fellows completed a self-assessment survey. RESULTS: Twelve fellows from four gastrointestinal fellowship training programs participated in the OSCE. In the "distracted care team" case, one-third of the fellows interrupted the conflict and refocused attention to the patient. Half of the fellows were able to display professionalism despite the heated discussion nearby. Fellows scored lowest in the interprofessionalism portion of post-OSCE surveys, measuring their ability to handle the conflict. In the "frazzled intern" case, 68% of fellows were able to establish a calm and professional relationship with the SP. Despite this success, only half of the fellows were successfully communicate a plan to the SP and only a third scored "well done" in a domain that focused on allowing the intern to think through the case with the fellow's guidance. CONCLUSION: Fellows must receive training on how to approach disruptive behavior. OSCEs are a tool that can assess fellow skills and set a culture for open discussion.

BACKGROUND: The AAMC has identified 13 Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) that all entering residents should be expected to perform on day 1 of residency without direct supervision regardless of specialty choice. We developed an immersive, Night on call (NOC) simulation to understand the measure of entrustment of all 13 Core EPAs from the perspective of patients, nurses, attendings, and peers. METHODS: NOC is a 4-hour simulation, during which a medical student rotates through a series of authentic clinical coverage scenarios including: 4 standardized patient (SP) cases with varying degrees of complexity, each of which require first answering a call from a standardized nurse, (SN), then evaluating a SP with the SN in the room, making immediate management decisions and writing a coverage note; a phone call to an attending (Attn, an experienced clinician) to orally present (OP), and discuss the case, formulation of a clinical question and finding a best answer using digital library resources (EBM), a test of ability to recognize a pre-entrustable peer, and a handoff of 4 cases to a peer (HOff, portrayed by an senior medical student). Competency assessments were based on validated tools where available. Each rater provided an entrustment judgment. This included 9 raters providing a total of 16 entrustment judgments: 4 SPs and 3 SNs (1 rating competency and 1 rating communication each), 1 Attn based on OP, 1 peer rating based on the HOff (1 item each). Raters were trained in both case portrayal and rating reliability. This study is IRB approved. After exploring the relationships among competency measures and entrustment judgements, to test the hypothesis that NOC measures trustworthiness of our near graduates, we conducted a one-factor (entrustment) confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with the 16-entrustment items allowing the ratings from the same raters and between raters on the same case to correlate. The CFA was conducted with a means and variance adjusted weighted-least squares estimation (WLSMV) to take the ordinal distributions of the entrustment items into account. RESULTS: 73 medical students (39 women; Age 26.5 (+2.6) years) completed NOC. The one-factor CFA model fit the data (chi² = 155.27, df = 112, p < .001, CFI = 0.97, TLI = 0.97, RMSEA = 0.07, p > 0.05). All but 2 of the 16 factor loadings were greater than 0.3, (Attn factor loading = 0.23 and the SP ratings from the first clinical case of NOC sequence (0.21)). CONCLUSIONS: A single-factor model with 16measures fit the entrustment framework within an ecologically valid simulated workplace suggesting that an individual student's clinical trustworthiness is measurable across discrete work activities. This work provides an assessment framework for the educational handoff from medical school to residency to ensure quality of care and patient safety

NEEDS AND OBJECTIVES: Team-based primary care (PC) is seen as the best way to provide proactive, patient-centered quality care. However, developing these team-based skills is difficult in the ever-shifting, stressful healthcare environment. We sought to develop effective training to enhance team functioning at an urban safety-net hospital, with the goal of clinical transformation (e.g. improving clinic flow, enhancing care for patients with diabetes). SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Team training intervention at Bellevue Hospital's Adult Ambulatory Care Center, flagship of the NYC Health & Hospitals (H +H), serving poor, diverse patients with complex medical and social needs. There are 4 adult PC teams, each with 8 attending physicians, 20 residents, 1-2 physician assistants, 2 nurses, 5 patient care associates (PCA), and 2 clerical associates (CA), all caring for a panel of ~7,500 patients. To date, we have completed a training cycle for one team, with 26 members: 10 providers (7 MDs, 2 PAs, and 1 NP), 4 RNs, 5 PCAs, 3 CAs, and 4 residents participating. We are scheduled to complete training of a second team in February 2017, with the other 2 to follow. DESCRIPTION: We partnered with a parallel NYC H + H effort, enabling a seamless NYU-HRSA/NYC H + H program with increased time allotted. This includes 4 three-hour workshops co-led by NYC H + H and NYU-HRSA faculty. Each workshop blends activating, team-building exercises for teams; mini-lectures on topics like roles and responsibilities, communication skills, huddles, and experiential activities using the team's patient data. This is reinforced with seven, 30-min biweekly meetings to follow up on teamidentified topics and facilitate team members' quality improvement projects. EVALUATION: A 31-item (each item rated 0-3), retrospective pre/post survey was administered to trainees after training, addressing individual skills and attitudes (16 items) and team functioning (15 items)14 of 26 participants (54%) in team 1 completed the survey, and Team 2 participants will complete the survey in Feb. 2017. Training resulted in increased rating of individual skills t = 4.86, p < .0001) and team functioning (t = 4.02, p = .003). Additional metrics, including tracking teams' QI efforts and assessing patient experience (e.g. Unannounced Standardized Patient reports) and administrative and panel level data, are ongoing. DISCUSSION/REFLECTION/LESSONS LEARNED: Implementation of successful team training in an under-resourced, urban primary care setting is challenging. It demands flexibility, tailoring to participants' concerns; and responding to changing clinical and administrative circumstances. Essential to success was partnering with team members to guide the training

BACKGROUND: Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) and milestones are expert judgments made based on many formative assessments. Their validity is dependent on the number of assessments but attention is increasingly being paid to having a "fair" sample of observations equally distributed across residents and contexts. OSCEs provide such a consistent, fair sample of behavior assessed under controlled conditions but have mostly used been used to provide granular skills feedback. We explore how faculty judge the "entrustability" of residents based on observing OSCE cases and then how these entrustments relate to OSCE skills performance. METHODS: In an 11-case OSCE for primary care residents (n = 25; PGY1-3), SPs rated skills in communication (information gathering, relationship development, education/counseling), assessment, patient education (case-specific), physical exam, professionalism, treatment plan, patient satisfaction and patient activation. Summary scores were calculated as%items rated well done (vs not or partly done; internal consistency > .72). Faculty observers then judged how much supervision the resident would need in actual practice to handle the case: 1-requires direct supervision, 2-requires indirect supervision, 3-ready for unsupervised practice, or 4- can supervise others. Mean entrustment rating across cases was correlated with clinical skills. RESULTS: Mean entrustment =2.46 (SD .37), falling between requires indirect supervision and ready for unsupervised practice. On average, residents were judged to need direct supervision in .40 cases (SD .65), indirect supervision in 4.76 (SD 2.03), ready for unsupervised practice in 2.92 (SD 1.80), and able to supervise others in 1.07 cases (SD 1.15) with PGY1 residents needing direct and indirect supervision in more cases than PGY2 and 3 (p = .037). Associations between OSCE performance and faculty entrustment ranged from essentially zero (communication sub-domains of information gathering and education/counseling; case-specific patient education; patient satisfaction) to negative (communication sub-domain of relationship development r = -.25, p = .16; professionalism r = -.21, p = .22) to positive (case-specific assessment, r = .35, p = .07; physical exam r = .30, p = .13; treatment plan r = .40, p = .04; patient activation r = .51, p = .008). Associations between skills performance and entrustment ratings varied by case. CONCLUSIONS: OSCEs provide a valuable opportunity for faculty to make entrustment judgments based on observing the same, complete encounter across many trainees. Entrustment judgments appear to be capturing elements of competence related to but different from SP assessments of performance, including especially "bottom line" aspects of practice such as assessment, physical exam, treatment plans and patient activation. Interestingly, we consider patient activation skills to be an "educationally sensitive patient outcome" i because both teachable and associated with patient outcomes and our results support the importance of this skill set

BACKGROUND:The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has described 6 core competencies with which trainees should demonstrate proficiency. Using the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), we aimed to assess 4 of these competencies among Pediatric Gastrointestinal (GI) fellows (PGs). METHODS:Eight first-year PGs from 6 medical centers in the New York area participated in a 4-station OSCE with trained standardized patient (SP) actors. The cases included an emergency department (ED) consult, or "ED Consult" for lower gastrointestinal bleeding; "Breaking Bad News" focusing on CF nutritional complications; "Second Opinion" for abdominal pain; "Transition of Care" for inflammatory bowel disease. At each station, attending faculty observed the encounters behind a 1-way mirror. SPs and faculties provided immediate feedback to the examined fellows. Previously validated OSCE checklists were used to assess performance. On completion, fellows attended debriefing sessions and completed surveys about the educational value. RESULTS:Median overall milestone competency scores were 6.9 (PC1), 4.8 (PC2), 5.9 (MK1), 5.7 (MK2), 6.4 (ICS1), 6.9 (Prof1), and 6.7 (Prof3). Overall, fellows score highest (7/9) on the inflammatory bowel disease "Transition of Care" case, found the "Breaking Bad News" Cystic Fibrosis OSCE to be the most challenging, and were most comfortable with the "ED Consult" OSCE, as a commonly encountered scenario. Overall, the fellows rated the educational value of the program highly. CONCLUSIONS:To our knowledge, although the OSCE has been validated in other medical fields, this is the first OSCE program developed for PGs fellows. These OSCEs have included Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education competencies, serving to assess fellows' skills in these areas while exposing them to challenging medical and psychosocial cases that they may not frequently encounter.