A small rural healthcare system and graduate medical education program expands its geographic footprint across two campuses and over 50 satellite clinics. In doing so, its leadership team realized that its graduate coursework was lacking a key ingredient—the human side of
medicine, or the “art” of medicine.
The Senior Leader team sought to add foundational, human-centered topics to their curriculum such as emotional intelligence, burnout prevention, mitigating compassion fatigue, building trust and lasting relationships, and finding and maintaining joy in the work. They believed that instilling these values and practices early on in a physician’s education would lead to tremendous impact downstream, but they needed help establishing a curriculum.
“We were excited to embark on this work with the HXF. The experience has far exceeded any expectations we had. In a very short period, it has positively impacted our faculty and current resident cohorts. We are confident it will do the same for our next generation of physicians.”
Teaching the human side of medicine.
Project goals:
To partner with Senior Leadership to elevate their graduate medical education program and build essential competencies for communication, wellness, resiliency and leadership among faculty and residents.
To cultivate a culture of continuous learning and improvement among residents and faculty by providing two learning tracks—Resident Development and Faculty Development.
Action
HXF Advisors partnered with the organization's Director of Healthcare Innovation and Transformation to co-develop a roadmap and model for building and deploying a new curriculum for both students and faculty that leveraged a national perspective on human-centered physician education, and evidence-based research approach. Together, our team along with senior leadership decided on a custom solution that would be deployed and developed simultaneously, evolving as more information and insights were collected on the results of the program.
Part of this educational roadmap included a content cadence, complete with a train-the-trainer model that would engage existing faculty and convey the importance of carving out this extra time to focus on the “art” of medicine, while working to ensure the curriculum was tailoring this custom program to the organization’s unique culture. They spent time interviewing and talking with residents and other stakeholders, listened deeply, and created an environment where our faculty would grow as a team throughout the training sessions.
A 3-year path to soft skills mastery.
At the conclusion of the initial immersive development process, a protocol was developed in which physicians and faculty carve out time every third week to discuss topics around communication, compassion, resiliency and leadership.
The Graduate Medical Education Program set a goal and ambition to address physician burnout and restore wellness through GME and Residency Program Enrichment. They engaged Healthcare Experience Foundation to provide:
Faculty Development
Curriculum Design
Residency Program Enrichment
Physician 1:1 Individual Coaching
Teaming
Established Faculty and Resident Norms
Pre-Post Evaluations