Many of our residents’ research projects have been incorporated as major improvements to our curriculum.
We encourage residents with interests in academic careers to involve themselves actively and critically in our program—to take ownership of their educational experience and find ways to improve it. These endeavors speak volumes to your value as a prospective faculty member.
We will fully support you in research that investigates the unique circumstances of medical education and aims to enhance it. Residents on our medical educator track have improved our journal club, implemented more effective exam preparation strategies and systematized patient handoffs to reduce errors, anxiety and safety issues.
This project began with an IRB-approved survey asking residents about their perceptions of the efficacy of our journal club. Residents were then randomly assigned to teams, each one including trainees from every year of residency.
All residents received systematic instruction on ways to appraise scientific literature, and each team picked original research articles to discuss in advance of the monthly journal club meeting. Teams met independently to discuss the paper and devise a presentation to summarize it for the full journal club, where faculty facilitated discussion.
After a year, residents were surveyed again. They found the team-based approach increased their understanding of the articles and encouraged them to read further on their own in the topics discussed. They also found that this approach helped develop their critical appraisal skills and kept them current with the scientific literature.
We have now adopted this highly effective format for our journal club.
Two residents developed this IRB-approved project to explore whether a team-based learning approach could improve residents’ preparation for the Psychiatry Resident-In-Training Examination (PRITE).
As with the journal club project, residents were placed on teams including members from all years of postgraduate training. Each team presented a topic to their peers, and they were evaluated on their presentation skills. The project culminated in a “Jeopardy”-style PRITE game with teams competing against each other for prizes, including a $100 restaurant gift certificate for the winning team.
The project improved our residents’ scores and is now a yearly event.
Residents on night call and those assigned to the emergency psychiatry rotation participate in CPEP rounds each morning. Our residents recognized that these rounds were not handled consistently, creating anxiety and confusion over their roles and what faculty expected from their case presentations. Two residents met with CPEP faculty and created standard objectives to meet at the morning rounds.
This project evolved into a reliable step-by-step system to safely transfer patient care in the emergency department from one provider to another.
The hospital now uses the system our residents created on a daily basis.