Johns Hopkins has partnered with two other leading academic medical centers to study resident wellness and clinical skill and the factors in the training environment that support those values in a five-year, $1.8 million, American Medical Association grant-supported study. Working under the hypothesis that time spent in direct patient care improves communication, heightens clinical skill, and supports professional wellness, faculty from Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, University of Alabama-Birmingham, and Stanford University are investigating over a dozen measures in the post-graduate training environment as they “re-imagine residency” for the twenty-first century.

During each year of your residency, the grant will fund innovative ways to facilitate outstanding clinical education. These carefully designed initiatives focus on improving your skills in communication and physical exam and mirrors the attributes of some of the best clinician educators by:

Strengthening your bedside physical exam and ultrasound skills through the Bedside Teaching Initiative.

Trainees spend little time at the bedside in the modern academic hospital and often sense a decline in their physical exam skills as they matriculate through residency. The bedside teaching initiative is designed to increase the amount of time that trainees spend at the bedside practicing and honing their physical exam and ultrasound skills under the guidance of dedicated clinician educators. We believe increase time at the bedside will increase satisfaction in the educational environment, improve engagement, and decrease burnout.

Providing you with direct, personalized feedback on how to improve your clinical skill through the Assessment of Physical Exam and Communication Skills (APECS) Initiative.

Assessment of Physical Examination and Communication Skills (APECS) is a novel assessment that uses encounters with both real and standardized patients to assess bedside clinical skills. APECS is modeled after the high-stakes MRCP (UK) Practical Assessment in Clinical Examination Skills (PACES) but includes real-time feedback and coaching from experienced faculty preceptors as part of a formative evaluation. During APECS, interns rotate through a series of stations where they encounter both real patients with real disease and standardized patients in the presence of a general internist and subspecialist. At the end of the series, residents receive personalized feedback on how to improve their clinical skills.

* Activities are modified for appropriate social distancing with masking during the COVID-19 pandemic and include telemedicine encounters.

Improving your communication and connection with patients through the Presence 5 Initiative.

The Stanford Presence 5comprises evidence-based practices that help foster clinician awareness, focus, and attention with the intent to understand and connect with patients. Presence 5 focuses on 5 important steps: preparing with intention, listening intently, agree on what matters, connecting with the patient’s story, and exploring a patient’s emotional cues. Presence 5practices help improve residents’ confidence in their interpersonal skills and experience meaningful interactions with their patients.

Assessing your residency experience, learning environment, wellness along the way through monthly surveys.

We believe your residency experience is deeply influenced by the learning environment and your wellness. We value your wellness and wellbeing. Using a variety of validated survey tools compiled into a monthly survey assessment, we assess residents’ sense of fulfillment, workload, and wellness. We use your feedback to inform and modify our initiatives aimed to help you.

Our Grant Team and Partners

More Local Team Members

• Amanda Bertram, MS
• Ariella Apfel, MS
• Bama Padmanaban
• Joyce Luckin, RN

Contact

Brian T. Garibaldi, MD, MEHP
Associate Professor of Medicine, Physiology and Health System Informatics
[email protected]

GEL Study Email Address: [email protected]