Journal of surgical education
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The purpose of this effort was to create an educational experience that provided learners a realistic disclosure experience and improved resident confidence discussing an adverse outcome with a patient and family. ⋯ Residents received important skills practice in our disclosure training; disclosure confidence increased after participation. Residents scored high on completion of disclosure tasks and low on comfort and proficiency of those tasks. The Checklist provided a useful set of tasks to review and complete in the exercise. Separating residents by PGY level enabled senior residents to experience a more complex scenario and junior residents extra time to practice.
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Comparative Study
Examining the Impact of Using the SIMPL Application on Feedback in Surgical Education.
The System for Improving and Measuring Procedural Learning (SIMPL) smartphone application allows physicians to provide dictated feedback to surgical residents. The impact of this novel feedback medium on the quality of feedback is unknown. Our objective was to compare the delivery and quality of best-case operative performance feedback given via SIMPL to feedback given in-person. ⋯ Although feedback given via SIMPL was more direct and based on the attendings' perspectives, the quality of the feedback did not differ significantly. Use of the dictation feature of SIMPL to deliver resident operative performance feedback is a reasonable alternative to in-person feedback.
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Trauma patients are triaged by the severity of their injury or need for intervention while en route to the trauma center according to trauma activation protocols that are institution specific. Significant research has been aimed at improving these protocols in order to optimize patient outcomes while striving for efficiency in care. However, it is known that patients are often undertriaged or overtriaged because protocol adherence remains imperfect. The goal of this quality improvement (QI) project was to improve this adherence, and thereby reduce the triage error. It was conducted as part of the formal undergraduate medical education curriculum at this institution. ⋯ The combination of web tool implementation and protocol refinement decreased the combined triage error rate by over 50% (from 16.7%-7.9%). We developed and tested a web tool that improved triage accuracy, and provided a sustainable method to enact future quality improvement. This web tool and QI framework would be easily expandable to other hospitals.
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International experiences are an increasingly emphasized feature of general surgery residency programs. In 2008, an international elective (IE) was implemented for general surgery residents at our institution. This effort was augmented by the establishment of a pathway for formal approval of IEs by the American Board of Surgery and Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in 2012. ⋯ Incorporation of IEs into our general surgery residency has demonstrated numerous benefits. IE participation provides valuable operative experience in both volume and variety, and can be especially impactful for those who may not have elected to pursue such opportunities independently. These experiences have the potential to empower general surgery residents to invest in similar practices and acts of generosity in their future careers.
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In response to our faculty's concerns about the quality and reliability of feedback from general surgery residents, we developed a novel faculty assessment tool. This study was designed as an interim analysis of the tool's effectiveness and discriminatory ability. ⋯ This milestone-based faculty assessment tool improves the quality of the feedback from surgical residents when evaluating faculty. When residents assign a negative statement to describe faculty educational effectiveness in a specific domain, performance improves. A milestone-based faculty assessment strategy should be explored on a national level.