Transforming Medical Education: Trust, Time, Teams & Technology

28 11 2011

This past Thanksgiving, I was able to reflect on the always jam-packed and inspiring Association of American Medical Colleges 2011 Meeting that took place earlier this month in Denver.  The theme of the meeting was transformation.  It was certainly an interesting theme with the undertones of economic recession and the GME funding crisis- and that was before the failure of the Supercommittee to reach a resolution.  So, how does medical education need to transform?  In more ways than one, it turns out.  So here are just 4 that were the recurring themes of the meeting and being a fan of alliteration, they all begin with “T”.

  • Trust – it was clear that we need to restore the Americans people trust in physicians and in the medical education process.  While students enter medicine to make a difference, something that they see in their journey to becoming a physician makes them jaded and they sometimes lose sight of their initial intention. Is it debt, burnout, role models…Or likely some combination of the 3? It does not matter, because we have to restore their faith in teaching– yes teaching.  Teaching is the heart and soul of our medical education and it is sometimes the easiest to lose in an academic health center focused on NIH dollars or US news world report rankings.  In addition to teaching our students, it is time to teach another constituency, our patients and Congress about the critical need for medical education.   And in fact, advocacy is something we need to be teaching our own trainees so they can engage in the dialogue regarding the future of healthcare.
  • Time- perhaps the most radical proposal advanced was by Victor Fuchs who suggested that we radically redesign medical school to have medical students specialize 2 years after medical school and enter specific pathways like they do in many other countries and in other fields.  I’m all for shortening dwell time for our medical trainees, but I am not so sure that young people are ready to make a serious commitment about what they want to do at such an early age.  There has to be a middle ground since at the same time, one of the most well attended sessions was “who cares about the 4th year of medical school?” which included many insightful comments about the need for reflection and consolidation of core skills.  So, clearly not all time is easily tossed to the waste side.
  • Teams- given the projected shortage of over 90,000 physicians by 2020, it is important to reorganize care into teams.  While there is a lot of controversy about what to call nurses who have PhDs, that was not the focus of the meeting. It was about how can you encourage everyone to practice to their highest level of certification.  Team based competences have actually been developed by several groups and have been advanced by many schools with inter professional learning.  One difficulty we face at home is that we don’t have allied health professions, but we are brainstorming how to involve actual nurses and pharmacists in training medical students.
  • Technology -there was a lot of discussion about technology to boost medical education.  There was even a technology in medical education abstract session moderated by @motherinmedicine and including podcasts, iPads, and social media in medicine.  Perhaps the most interesting speaker was Chuck Friedman at the University of Michigan who is the former technology czar of the US and eloquently highlighted the need for moving medical education from wrote memorization to a distributed knowledge where the most important information future physicians will need to know is not what the information is off the top of their head BUT how to access information.  He went so far to say testing would move to “unassisted testing” followed by “cloud-supported testing” which would then merge into a pass or fail based on performance on both.  I know all of us who certified or recertified recently would welcome assistance from the cloud- it is after all the closest approximation to real medicine.  However, my hands down favorite moment of this session was when someone astutely asked what about these physicians when the power goes out or when the computer system fries.  His response was simple and so spot on… “Dont get me started on the state of IT in our teaching hospitals”.
So, while we just celebrated a holiday and accompanying ritual to give thanks, it is now time for medical educators to transcend the traditional status quo and instead test novel techniques to transform medical training — not only to restore public trust but so we can also train the trainees who will treat us in the future.
–Vineet Arora MD

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Electronic Health Records, Quality & Safety: Pritzker IHI Open School Recap

13 11 2011

computer hardware,doctors,healthcare,males,medicine,men,PCS,people,people at work,persons,physicians,science,stethoscopes,technology,x-raysA classroom at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine was packed earlier this month with both medical students and students in the Graduate Program in Health Administration and Policy (GPHAP) interested in learning more about the IHI and quality improvement.   Dr. Chad Whelan, a hospitalist and institutional leader on quality improvement, facilitated an open discussion about some of the challenges in using electronic health records to improve quality of care and encourage physicians to practice more evidence based medicine.  Some of the topics covered included the unintended consequences of using electronic records, the benefits of an electronic record from an administrative standpoint, and issues surrounding the quality of documentation.  The meeting was organized by students in Pritzker’s Quality and Safety Track with guidance from Laura Botwinick, Director of GPHAP.   During a lively and interactive question and answer session, here are just a few of the questions that were raised by students and the discussion that ensued.

How interoperable are the record systems?  Why aren’t we using one single interoperable system?  While interoperability is a focus of “meaningful use” that is part of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, electronic health records industry is also a marketplace with vendors competing for market share.  Because of that, interoperability may not have been achieved earlier. For larger healthcare systems such as the VA, the implementation of CPRS represents an example of an interoperable system across many hospitals nationwide.   Since academic medical centers often have several teaching hospital affiliates, physicians and trainees have to learn to work in several different systems, some of which may not even talk to each other.  While many urban medical centers have adopted electronic health records, a recent study demonstrated only 17% of hospitals capital investments.

What are the reasons behind the findings in the literature that mortality and errors sometimes increase when an EHR is installed?  Medicine is a complex system and sometimes changing one thing without changing another will yield unexpected outcomes.  Furthermore, if bad processes are automated, errors can happen much more quickly and systematically if they were being made in the first place.  That is why it is important to use QI tools to improve systems before an EHR is laid over them.  For example, during a QI intervention for pressure ulcers, the implementation of EHR for nursing documentation actually led to a decrease in the physician recording of pressure ulcers since they did not know where to access nursing notes.

How much training do practicing physicians get when an EHR is deployed?  Training is definitely part of the EHR implementation strategy.  One commonly used approach is to actively train early adopters who can champion it for the late adapters and laggards. At our hospital, that training included several hours of classroom time PLUS watching online video trainings at home with practice tutorials.  However, as the faculty and others present agreed, the learning curve is steep and learning is an ongoing process.  Anecdotally, there is often “reverse mentoring” with many of the residents who learn on the job are able to teach the attendings tricks of the trade.

What can be done to avoid the cut and paste problems that have emerged?  Interestingly, hospitals often have the choice whether to disable cut and paste or keep it active.  By disabling it however, the ability of EHRs to make doctors more efficient is sacrificed.  However, enabling cut and paste creates the risk that the information is out of date or inaccurate.   While many egregious examples have been described in the literature, there are some novel experiments being tried around the country include trying to use different colors for pasted information or creating patient records like wikis so multiple people are updating.   In a handoff curriculum for residents, we do highlight avoiding CoPaGA syndrome (Copy and Paste Gone Amok) by highlighting that it is allowed to cut and paste but their responsibility is to cut, paste, and update.

Are medical students getting trained on electronic health records?  Most learning at present is orientation to a specific system and on-the-job training.  Principles of effective practice with EHR need to be translated into medical education as it is an important core skill that all medical graduates will need.  While medical informatics is covered by in some form in many medical schools, recent debates highlight that more robust teaching on electronic health records needs to evolve and expand.   Moreover, the EHR can be used to actually advance medical education by providing a record of what types of patients a resident sees and assist in performance evaluation of patient care.

–Anthony Aspesi MS2 (with Laura Botwinick and Vineet Arora)


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Advocate to Preserve Residency Funding

30 10 2011

bills,budgeting,businesses,cash,cost cutting,currencies,dollars,savingsSo, you have probably heard about the Supercommittee (gang of 12) and the need to brace for massive cuts to control federal spending.  But, do you know that the chief target is RESIDENCY TRAINING!   That is right.   Funding for residency largely comes from Medicare, and the general concern is that they are paying too much and not getting their money’s worth.  Of course, this comes at a time when there is a shortage of residency spots given the expansion of US medical schools, and a dire need for physicians, especially in primary care, to meet the needs of healthcare reform.

So, in this perfect storm, 40 medical groups (yes, there was that much consensus) sent a letter to the Supercommittee pleading with them not to cut GME funding.   Now the situation is dire enough that the AAMC advocacy leaders are in high gear encouraging those in graduate medical education to encourage their residents to write to their Congressman.  (And yes, if you live in a Supercommittee state, its even more important for you to do this).

So if you are a resident or future resident or can sympathize with the need to have future physicians, now is the time to take action.   For my fellow medical educators out there, you don’t need to be left out.  The American College of Physicians has a very broad (don’t need to be an internist)  easy-to-use advocacy website to shoot of a quick note to your Representative and Senator about the need to preserve GME funding.

Medical educators have actually started a dialogue about the role of advocacy in medical education.  Specifically, the Editor of Academic Medicine has challenged us to come up with how advocacy should properly be integrated into medical training.  I can think of no other way than advocating for preserving funding for the system by which we train our nation’s future physicians.

Vineet Arora MD

(AAMC email encouraging residents to take action)

***************************************************************

Dear Resident:

I encourage you to take a few minutes to  visit the AAMC Legislative Action Center (http://capwiz.com/aamc/home/), select “Residents”,  and send an electronic letter opposing cuts in Medicare funds that support residency programs.   With the zip code you enter, the letter will be sent automatically to your Senators and Representatives urging them to oppose GME cuts as part of deficit reduction.  PLEASE USE YOUR PERSONAL EMAIL ADDRESS (eg, gmail.com), AND NOT YOUR INSTITUTIONAL EMAIL ADDRESS.

Congress is discussing a deficit reduction proposal that would cut funding by as much as 60%, or $60 billion, for Graduate Medical Education (GME) and jeopardize residency training programs across the country. Given the current and growing shortage of physicians, GME cuts will reduce access to health care and threaten the well-being of all Americans.

It is most important that residents enrolled in programs in Arizona, California, Washington State, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Montana, Michigan, Maryland, Texas, or South Carolina, voice your concerns.    You are represented by members of the “Super Committee” that will finalize the deficit reduction plan.

Thank you for your help.

Atul Grover, M.D.
Chief Advocacy Officer
AAMC


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Differences Between Real & Fake Patients

9 10 2011

Each morning this week, I am rounding on a busy inpatient general medicine service in an academic hospital seeing real patients.  Each night this week, I am also studying for the internal medicine recertification exam where I am doing countless MKSAP questions which present the diagnostic and management conundrums of “fake patients.”   While there are a variety of things I could say about the process, one thing is clear- the real patients don’t ever come as neatly wrapped and easy to figure out as the pithy and succinct questions based on fake patients in the prep questions!   Perhaps the most distinct differences are that real patients suffer from real problems that plague real people…and that is of course why one of the most important lessons for our medical students is that being a good doctor is more than just how well you do on a standardized exam.  It is knowing how to mobilize a team and resources to tend to all of these problems in the same patient.   Here are just a few ways in which the real patients we see differ from testable “patients.”

  • Social problems trump medical problems – Many of the patients we see suffer from poor health literacy, lack of insurance, access to safe housing, affordable healthy food, and access to healthcare outside of the hospital that prevents optimal care and treatment of their medical conditions.  Understanding how to bring up and address these problems is equally important to design a customized care plan for a patient that will ensure their most optimal recovery and health outside of the hospital.
  • Caregiver support- Many older patients who are chronically ill are cared for by family members who suffer a lot of stress.  This stress manifests in different ways and sometimes you see that sigh of relief when they come to the hospital since they are in need of as much care and support as their family member.  Arranging home services and providing and ensuring caregiver support is a key part of hospital care these days.
  • Insurance compatibility – Most patients require services that go beyond hospital discharge, such as home IV antibiotics or short-term rehabilitation stays after hospitalization to recover.  In addition, patients often require close follow up after hospitalization. Unfortunately, arranging such things for patients who are uninsured or underinsured is increasingly difficult.  Perhaps this is one thing that we can hope to change with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act- lets at least hope so.  But for now, it’s sometimes a guessing game how to piece together the most logical plan that will also be optimally covered.
  • Medical necessity – These days, patients can’t stay in the hospital to “recover” unless it meets strict criteria for inpatient admission.  This process is audited by private contractors so hospitals are required to follow strict guidelines or face harsh penalties from Medicare.  The challenge is that for a variety of social issues documented above, patients may not be ready to go home (caregiver not ready, patient lacks understanding regarding illness, etc.) but they have to go home or be faced with footing the bill for their stay.   Given that rock and a hard place, it’s a difficult position for any doctor to be in.

Because medicine does change and evolve very quickly, we refresh our medical knowledge every 10 years by testing our clinical acumen through ‘caring’ for fake patients on a written exam.  But, a written exam can only go so far…Given the sea changes occurring on a daily basis in our healthcare delivery system, it is equally important to stay up-to-date on systems-level changes that influence how we can actually provide care for real patients.  After all, both are necessary for good doctoring.

Vineet Arora, MD


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Rising Above the Sea of MacBooks: “Edu-tainment” and Other Tips

12 09 2011

Although Steve Jobs has stepped down as CEO of Apple, his legacy for physicians-in-training is very palpable. Or should that be visual – As I looked into the auditorium of eager and bright incoming medical students this Summer, I saw a bunch of Apple’s staring back at me – sleek, silver and unmistakably MacBooks.  This is the millennial generation so why would I be surprised?  Maybe because it is more ever-present than before this year.  Could it be that the entering class of 2015 had more millenials?  Actually, another hypothesis has also been put forth that is equally if not more plausible…our medical school auditoriums were installed with new desks and chairs.  While these were well received, the desks served as an inviting surface just beckoning for the MacBooks to be placed there.    As a result, you’re never sure if you’re competing with Facebook, the worldwide internet, or even email messages that appear more interesting than your class.   Since lecture capture technology has made it possible for people to view lectures from home, it’s important to make attending lecture in person worthwhile.  Well, here are some tips for medical educators who ‘lecture’ in this new age.

1.  Engage in “edu-tainment” – As Scott Litin at Mayo refers to it, “edu-tainment” is the goal – entertainment via education.  How does one incorporate entertainment into lecture style?  Well, the easiest way is through humor.  This is difficult since not everyone is funny by nature so it may be that you have to inject humor in odd ways.

2. Play games – Games are inherently fun and interactive can stimulate a lot of learning and discussion.  While you may be thinking about computer games, easy games can often stimulate learning.  One of our research ethics faculty played 20 questions with the group of students to teach about landmark research ethics cases.

3. Turn into a talk show – There is nothing more boring than watching the same person for an hour give a talk.  It is much more interesting to watch a panel of people tell a story about themselves – whether it be a patient, another physician, or another student.  I still remember medical school lectures with invited guests that had this talk show appeal due to the lack of power point and focus on the story.  While I’m not suggesting a Jerry Springer approach, who doesn’t love Oprah – at least Chicago has several role models to choose from.

4. Showcase video – Video is one of my favorite teaching tricks.  One well made video can communicate a thousand research articles.  In our week of Scholarship and Discovery, our faculty used videos from Xtranormal (no it was not the famous orthopedics vs anesthesia) but a similar one.  One faculty who could not attend taped a welcome introduction, and another used a clip from “Off the Map” which is now off the air but is still an effective reminder of how NOT to perceive global health.

5. Use audience response – Use of Turning Point clickers can result in instant feedback and engagement with students as they see the results of their poll immediately. It also tells you how many people who up to class!  The only problem is that passing out the clickers and collecting them can be rather time consuming.  So, another possibility is to issue them at the start of class which is done in some colleges and used as a way to count attendance (until a brilliant undergrad brings in a bunch of clickers to class to vote for their lazier friends!).  Here Steve Jobs can help again – Turning Point has audience response systems for iPhones and iPads that can be used and automatically identify people- but it would require that everyone have a smartphone and purchase a license to the software.

6. Refer to the internet– Given that students are on the computer, you can take advantage of it and ask them to visit internet resources in class by showing them urls or web pages that are of use.  Sometimes you may actually refer to your own course website like we do.

7. Provide fancy color handouts – While handouts may sound like they have gone by the waste side, there is nothing like a fancy color brochure or handout to create a “buzz”.  It’s almost like a souvenir of their hard journey to class that day.  If you ever want to provide someone with a ‘leave behind’ that looks important, lamination is key.  A color laminated leave-behind is even better.  Pocket cards are some of my favorites.

Is there any guarantee these tips will work?  Of course not.  But, what’s the harm in trying?  While some professional schools have gone so far as to block wireless in lecture halls, the truth is that current medicine is augmented with the help of computers and online resources- so we should figure out how medical education can be too.

–Vineet Arora, MD


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Whittling Costs in White Coats

10 08 2011

At the beginning of last week, I was excited to be invited to take part in the ABIM Foundation Summer Forum, where the who’s who in medicine convened to discuss how to create a sustainable healthcare system, where costs are controlled and quality of care is preserved.   We heard some bold vision and ideas, many of which were focused on badly needed policy levers or system redesign.  However, as I ended my week on Sunday with investing Pritzker’s new medical student class with their white coats, I was wondering how we can teach and empower individual trainees to do their part.  As our speaker highlighted so eloquently, the most powerful thing about the white coat is what and who is in it…and also the learning that takes place in it.  So, in that vein, here are some thoughts for what students and residents can do.

  • Read up on the topic – some excellent resources I heard about at the meeting
  1. Physician Stewardship of Health Care in an Era of Finite Resources– a recent article in JAMA by Drs. Chris Cassel and David Reuben regarding the various levels of stewardship
  2. Personal Reflections on the High Cost of American Medical Care – a recent article in Archives of Internal Medicine by Dr. Steven Schroeder
  3. The Pricing Of U.S. Hospital Services: Chaos Behind A Veil Of Secrecy – a classic by noted economist Uwe Reinhardt
  4. Less is More Series – a great resource in Archives of Internal Medicine edited by Rosemary Gibson and others.
  • Listen to the patient  Of course, this sounds simple…but the truth is that more times than not, the answer is in the patient history.   With duty hours and workload, taking a detailed history sometimes takes a backseat to reviewing the electronic iPatient.  One approach is to start with two open questions:  (1) Tell me about yourself; and (2) What are your healthcare goals?   Often, the key is to try to understand the baseline.  I once took care of an older patient who had abdominal pain and had received over 40 abdominal CTs over the past several years.  When we were able to gather more information from the patient and her family, it turns out that she has had bad abdominal pain for over 30 years that would come and go!   By working this information into her discharge summary and plugging her into primary care, our hope was to have her avoid future costly and harmful workups.  As I’ve mentioned before, students often have more time with patients than residents or attendings and can often take the most helpful and detailed history!
  • Learn the physical exam Often times, we rely on tests since we do not trust our physical exams.   It is too easy to get an echo when you are wondering if you are truly hearing a murmur.  The lore here is that you need to  listen to a lot of normals to be able to detect the abnormal.  Because of this, when I am on service, I usually invite the third year student to examine every patient with me so they can see a lot of exams.  Usually by the end, they are more confident in their ability to detect crackles or murmurs.  As stated by our white coat speaker, the stethoscope is indeed a powerful tool.  Interestingly, with the infectious increase in global health experiences among medical students and residents, working in resource poor settings requires ingenuity and reliance on the lowest technologically feasible solution.   Closer to home, volunteering in a free clinic is likely to provide one with the same experiences.
  • Don’t just check boxes but ask why the test is indicated Trainees can ask the difficult question – why are we ordering this test or medication?  Is it indicated?   An even better question to research is whether there is a CHEAPER (we can’t shy away from using that word anymore) alternative that would provide the same information?   For example, before every PE protocol CT or Doppler to rule out DVT, I always ask my team to calculate the Wells score so we understand if the test is indicated and what our pretest probability is.  In addition, every study has a downside, whether it be hospital-acquired anemia from phlebotomy or incidentalomas and pseudodisease from excessive imaging.  It is easy to check boxes, it is harder to question why you are checking them.
  • Try to find out how much the test costs While the answer is elusive, the goal is to start the conversation in your own backyard.  There are anecdotal reports of residents going back over 10 years who have tried to work with their hospital billing departments to find out how much things cost.  Moreover, greater knowledge of costs will change practice patterns as we’ve discussed before.
  • Counsel patients One impressive thing about the ABIM Foundation Forum was the representation of patient advocacy groups who were willing to partner with physicians and physician groups to reduce the costs of care.  While the image that may immediately come to mind most is of a patient coming in to request a test that is not indicated, engaged and informed patients expressed the desire to work together and that less is more.   In some communities, there is a lot of distrust of the medical care system and these conversations have to start one patient at a time.

Unfortunately, whittling healthcare costs is not as easy as teaching trainees.  As long as our systems and the faculty within them promote costly workarounds such as misrepresenting tests as urgent to expedite them, ordering tests as fast as possible for fear of discharge delay, or wasteful lab testing, trainees will be reprimanded for NOT doing something.  Therefore, to truly make change in our teaching hospitals, we must also ask that our faculty reach deep into their own white coats and find the courage to say “Don’t just do something, stand there.”

–Vineet Arora, MD


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Categories : hospital life, medical student, residency training

Help Debunk A Medical Myth About Patients Leaving AMA

11 07 2011

This week at FutureDocs, we are working with our friend and colleague Glass Hospital as well as one of our medical students and a recent residency graduate to bring to light a medical myth about hospitalized patients who leave against medical advice.  Here is an excerpt from his post about our work which includes a new Squidoo page created by Gabe Schaefer MS3 on what to do when patients leave AMA and the video vignette below.  Let us know what you think and please share this with anyone who you think may benefit!

Excerpt from this week at GlassHospital:

Like Mikey, the Life cereal kid who died from mixing Pop Rocks and Coke, or the spider eggs in Bubble Yum that help make it so soft and chewy, Medicine has its share of urban legends.  Did you know, for example, that if you’re hospitalized and decide that you want to leave “Against Medical Advice” [AMA], that your insurer won’t pay for the hospitalization?

Bunk.

Apparently, this canard is pervasively believed amongst doctors and passed from generation to generation of trainees just like the nonsense about cute ol’ Mikey.  A few years ago, a medical student came to me with a case of moral distress. She had seen the doctor-in-training with whom she was working become upset at a patient for declining an invasive heart procedure.

Rather than reason with the patient and convince her that the test was indeed indicated and would be of greater benefit than possible harm, the resident doctor in question quickly informed the patient that if she refused the procedure and signed out AMA, she’d be financially responsible for the entire cost of the hospitalization, as her insurer would decline to pay.

This left our student wondering if this was true, and if there were ethical safeguards against this.   Her moral distress led to a research project that debunks this notion [we hope] once and for all.

I can’t give you the specifics (an article on our findings is under review at a medical journal) just yet, but GlassHospital and FutureDocs are happy to share with you the educational fruits of our findings to date. You can click over here to learn more in true interactive fashion, or if you prefer, watch only the cameo-encrusted video tour-de-force right below. [Who is that guy playing angry Mr. Smith? He looks familiar. And who, for heaven's sake, does his wardrobe?]

Let us know your thoughts! On the video, the website, the urban legend. What other medical urban legends would you like to see debunked?


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