Surgical Education Curriculum

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We are working to change the educational curriculum at our program as previous methods have not been very effective and with the new changes to the absite, this seems like a good time to make a change for the better. Residents at our program were previously doing weekly to biweekly score assignments with questions and a later meeting and discussion of these questions with a member of the faculty on our education day. This was only so helpful as residents had already done the questions prior to the discussion and probably half the residents didn't really do the reading or pay attention.

I'm looking for advice on ways to change the way we motivate our residents and keep them accountable. I was thinking about splitting people up into groups or service/team based small groups to go over the material on our educational day and making the chiefs more responsible for the junior resident education. It would be nice if there could be a little competition or incentives involved without being cheesy about it. I was wondering if any of y'all have a good system at your program, ways to motivate residents or have had any success with raising absite scores in your program. Any advice or input is appreciated!!

 

[SLUser11]

We are working to change the educational curriculum at our program as previous methods have not been very effective and with the new changes to the absite, this seems like a good time to make a change for the better. Residents at our program were previously doing weekly to biweekly score assignments with questions and a later meeting and discussion of these questions with a member of the faculty on our education day. This was only so helpful as residents had already done the questions prior to the discussion and probably half the residents didn't really do the reading or pay attention.

I'm looking for advice on ways to change the way we motivate our residents and keep them accountable. I was thinking about splitting people up into groups or service/team based small groups to go over the material on our educational day and making the chiefs more responsible for the junior resident education. It would be nice if there could be a little competition or incentives involved without being cheesy about it. I was wondering if any of y'all have a good system at your program, ways to motivate residents or have had any success with raising absite scores in your program. Any advice or input is appreciated!!

I would not stray too much from the SCORE curriculum, as it is the way of the future, and the new ABSITE will reflect this.

You already mentioned the most effective way to motivate residents: accountability. If they know that they will be called out on the material they were supposed to read, they are more likely to actually do it. There are a million different ways to hold the residents accountable, and PDs all have a different approach...some even putting all the quiz and test scores out there for the rest of the residency to see (a shame method I don't agree with).

A big part of accountability is negative reinforcement for a bad performance. That may be remediation, but a more common scenario is a probation of sorts. Usually the cutoff for this is 30th percentile or below. This may include extra help or mentoring, or perhaps a mandatory ABSITE course. For those that are allowed to moonlight, there should probably be some research and ABSITE benchmarks that have to be met first.

Another approach is positive reinforcement. Some high-functioning residents will be adequately motivated by some sort of prize or distinction for those who perform well. Once again, there are many ways to do this. For a previous program I was affiliated with, the PD hosted a dinner for all residents who scored above the 80th percentile on the ABSITE. The high score got to pick the restaurant.

To be honest, I think this is a PD-level project, not something to be pawned off on the residents to develop and implement. Perhaps that is part of the problem. Bosses have accountability as well.