Melissa M. Bakar, MD
Columbia University
Program Size: More than 101 residents
Academic Setting: Mixed
Clinical Setting: Professionalism/Communication
Overview
This evaluation was developed for use at our interdisciplinary rounds. At the end of the Intern's month long block, key faculty advisors attend interdisciplinary rounds and seek feedback from Social Workers, Case Managers, Bedside Nurses, Unit Clerks, Nutritionists, and other team members on the residents' professionalism, communication skills, teamwork, and transitions of care.
Download the Tool
Development
A group of four key faculty advisors came together to develop a tool for use at interdisciplinary rounds. After initial development, it was introduced to the interdisciplinary team, and the help of nursing and care coordination supervisors was enlisted to encourage participation. Over the first year the four key faculty advisors have been responsible for maintaining the monthly feedback. Our experience obtaining feedback led us to scale back from our initial evaluation, which contained nine questions, to this updated version containing only three questions. The updated version also provides additional room for comments, which have proven to be highly valuable.
Lessons Learned
Less is more. We started with an initial nine question evaluation which proved too burdensome for staff to proceed through. We honed this to three questions which provided information on the Milestones we most needed additional data points for.
Faculty advisors attending the rounds in person and soliciting feedback provides a larger response rate than if the surveys were sent out to the staff.
Faculty Development and Training
Faculty must be able to attend rounds in person and be comfortable soliciting feedback from a group and asking probing and clarifying questions in order to obtain useful, constructive feedback. It is also beneficial to have introductory sessions with the interdisciplinary staff who will be surveyed in order to explain the purposes/goals of the evaluation.
How Used to Inform Decisions about a Learner's Milestone
This tool has been extremely useful in obtaining information regarding the residents' communication skills, professionalism, and systems based practices. We have mapped our three questions to ICS-1, ICS-2, PROF-1, SBP 1, and SBP 4.
For more information, please contact mb3178@cumc.columbia.edu.