In an effort to spur creative approaches to curriculum design and education of graduate medical students, the Office of Graduate Medical Education has awarded funds to worthy proposals from the GME Innovation Fund on the basis of clarity, feasibility, and potential impact.

In previous years, Internal Medicine members have received grants to expand point-of-care ultrasound education, implement a teaching skills curriculum, and to refine and expand the now-nationally influential Objective Structured Clinical Evaluations (OSCE).

This year, GME has awarded Innovation Fund proposals to four projects from members of the Department of Internal Medicine. We asked each of the recipients to tell us about their projects.

“Distinction in Health Equities Track for Internal Medicine Residents.”
Krista Johnson, MD and Manish Suneja, MD

We are working in IM to improve and expand our training in DEIJ for all our residents and plan to use the funding to support our health equities track. This new curriculum is for residents who have interest in delving into disparities, equity, inclusion, and justice during residency to meet on a regular basis, be assigned a mentor, and work on a health equity project (curriculum, QI, research, advocacy) and be engaged with community partners and/or global partners. Residents will present their projects and have a final product to earn distinction in this track.

“Patient-centered team-focused rounding”
Cory Wilson, MD

Patient-Centered, Team-Focused Rounds (PCTFR) allows for active, real-time care that is patient centered while explicitly focusing on the team’s delivery of care using an interdisciplinary team-based model. This model adopts patient-centered rounding practices and adds an innovative team focused healthcare delivery model system that aims to improve quality of patient care, timeliness and quality of documentation, and reduce administrative burden of team members.

“Using Simulated Patient Encounters to Train PGY-2 IM Residents to Lead Family Meetings”
Lauren Zabel, MD

Learning how to lead family meetings is an important skill for all physicians who care for patients and families with serious illnesses. Family meetings require many advanced communication skills, including group facilitation, delivering bad news, conflict resolution, and guidance in decision making.  Our project will build off of the basic communication skills taught to first year internal medicine residents during the annual “OSCE Day.” We would like to expand upon this curriculum by designing a workshop that will focus on teaching and practicing the more advanced communication skills that are required for an effective goals of care discussions.

“Development of a Point-of-Care Ultrasound Pathway for Internal Medicine Residents”
Sydney Bowmaster, MD

The Distinction in Point-of-Care Ultrasound Pathway was designed for internal medicine residents who anticipate utilizing bedside clinical ultrasound as a part of their professional career. The pathway is an educational opportunity for interested residents to receive advanced ultrasound instruction and mentorship that extends beyond the current three-year longitudinal POCUS curriculum. Residents accepted into the pathway will be paired with a mentor for real-time feedback on live scanning sessions as well as quality assurance of independently obtained ultrasound images within their portfolio. Participants will attend group meetings for further education and discussion and will also complete an ultrasound-focused scholarly activity as a part of the distinction track. Internal medicine residents completing the requirements of the pathway will be awarded the Distinction in Point-of-Care Ultrasound upon graduation.