Published in:
01-04-2012 | Innovations in Medical Education
Effects of a Focused Patient-Centered Care Curriculum on the Experiences of Internal Medicine Residents and their Patients
Published in: Journal of General Internal Medicine | Issue 4/2012
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BACKGROUND
Traditional residency training may not promote competencies in patient-centered care.
AIM
To improve residents’ competencies in delivering patient-centered care.
SETTING/PARTICIPANTS
Internal medicine residents at a university-based teaching hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
One inpatient team admitted half the usual census and was exposed to a multi-modal patient-centered care curriculum to promote knowledge of patients as individuals, improve patient transitions of care, and reduce barriers to medication adherence.
PROGRAM EVALUATION
Annual resident surveys (N = 40) revealed that the intervention was judged as professionally valuable (90%) and important to their training (90%) and offered experiences not available during other rotations (88%). Compared to standard inpatient rotation evaluations (n = 163), intervention rotation evaluations (n = 51) showed no differences in ratings for traditional medical learning, but higher ratings for improving how housestaff address patient medication adherence, communicate with patients about post-hospital transition of care, and know their patients as people (all p < 0.01). On post-discharge surveys, patients from the intervention team (N = 177, score 90.4, percentile ranking 97%) reported greater satisfaction with physicians than patients on standard teams (N = 924, score 86.1, percentile ranking 47%) p < 0.01).
DISCUSSION
A patient-centered inpatient curriculum was associated with higher satisfaction ratings in patient-centered domains by internal medicine residents and with higher satisfaction ratings of their physicians by patients. Future research will explore the intervention’s impact on clinical outcomes.