Due to technical issues with last week’s session, we are moving our webinars to a new platform.

This week’s session ‘Remediation of “High Stakes” professional exams’ will be postponed to April 13th so that we may transition smoothly to the new system. We will announce the new date soon.

Next week, we will continue our series as scheduled, with “Trust and Remediation: Entrustable Professional Activities and Trust Decisions” from presenter Brian Martin.

We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this delay but looking forward to providing you with an improved webinar experience next week.

If you have any questions, please write support@iamse.org.

Sharing Assessment Information: Why, How, and What to Consider
Presenter: Lynn Cleary
March 23, 12 PM ET

Competencies in medical education are developed longitudinally, and competency is rarely achieved within one course, clinical rotation, or educational unit. Learners gain competency at differing paces, and some require more time or practice to achieve one or another competency. Sharing assessment information across traditional course boundaries may improve efficiency and support more personalized educational experiences. As a group, educators have some ambivalence about sharing assessment information, with the greatest concern that sharing assessments may introduce bias. This webinar will summarize existing literature on the subject, the case for and against sharing assessment information, and considerations in establishing a process for sharing assessment information.

For more information and to register for the Spring 2017 Audio Seminar Series, please click here.

Trust and Remediation: Entrustable Professional Activities and Trust Decisions
Presenter: Bryan Martin
March 16, 12 PM ET

Professionalism is difficult to define, and both professionalism and unprofessional activities are too often described in terms that resemble the old adage: “you will know it when you see it.” Activities that are difficult to define and quantitate are also difficult to remediate, and leave the educator with the difficult and frustrating task of accessing a remedial endpoint for an attribute that is difficult to define. This program will examine the important role of trust in the training of medical professionals. How do we develop, evaluate and remediate trust in the training of medical professionals? The new paradigm in undergraduate medical education assessment: Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs), has made the incorporation of trust a vital part of medical education. Medical Educators and patients both want the same thing in student health care providers. The patient needs to trust that the team member who is in a learning role is knowledgeable, yet understands the limits of his/her knowledge, is compassionate, can communicate with them in a way they can understand, who will be there when needed; in a word, one they can trust. The preceptor also needs to know the learner has these attributes, and wants a student who is able to ask for, receive and react to, feedback. While it may seem obvious that trust underlies all educational and medical decision making, trust is difficult to access and even more difficult to remediate if it is lacking or lost. There is evidence that physician-learners are poor at accessing their own capabilities, making feedback a critical part of their education, and yet, honest, constructive feedback is both difficult to give and difficult to receive. EPAs may help educators give this feedback by breaking down Entrustable Professional Activities into individual competencies which can be evaluated and discussed. Using a series of case examples this webinar is designed to help the educator develop an emotional intelligence based strategy to help provide better communication and remediate trust based decision making.

For more information and to register for the Spring 2017 Audio Seminar Series, please click here.

In case you missed last week’s Webcast Audio Seminar Series, here’s the highlights of the session:

Cultivating Resilience and Reducing Burnout for Health Professionals: The Power of Presence, Reflective Practice and Appreciative Dialogue
Mick Krasner MD
University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry

Summary:

• The current crisis in the practice of Medicine is influenced by crises of meaning, identity, purpose and role.
• To offset burnout, it is imperative to create capacity as individuals and organizations to build resilience and a sense of accomplishment in work life.
• Resilience is an integrated way of learning, a capacity that can be cultivated and grown. Humans are uniquely designed for this.
• Cultivating resilience involves reimagining how one views stress and how one sees his/her capacity to cope with stress.
• In order to build resources for resilience, one must engage with the environment, acknowledge uncertainty, face difficulties head-on, appraise one’s relationship with stress and develop perspective-taking skills.
• Physician well-being and burnout inform both quality of care and quality of caring.
• Three domains characterize burnout: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and low personal accomplishment. Negative physical, social and psychological environments influence these domains.
• There is no “one size fits all” for interventions to address burnout. However, the literature provides many examples of different interventions that have had positive effects in the burnout domains. (Kearney, JAMA, 2009, West et al. Lancet, 2016, West et al. JAMA, 2014, Krasner et al. JAMA, 2009, Beckman et al. Academic Medicine, 2013).
• Strategies for addressing burnout and cultivating well-being include: mindfulness, appreciative inquiry and communication and narrative medicine (crafting stories).
• Participation in a mindful communication program yielded positive results. Participants identified three domains for enhancing wellness: establishing a sense of community, skills development and self-care (giving oneself permission to take time for self-development).
• Wellness is not just for the “at risk” and “floundering;” it needs to be integrated into the formal and hidden curricula and prioritized and institutionalized at all levels of education.

Registration for the Spring WAS Series is now open! Click here for more information or to register today.