Physician engagement is a rewarding experience for both faculty and the resident
Introduction/Background: Physician engagement is paramount and challenging in the ED. With consideration of the attending’s role as teacher and by defining and awarding exemplary behavior and clinical aptitude of residents, the environment should and can foster both roles.
Educational Objectives: To foster positive educative exchanges that clarify best practices in emergency medicine. To support active authentic education and to shape an environment that values engagement and feedback.
Curricular Design: A faculty engagement conference was piloted in 2016, faculty received 3 lectures designed to generate conversation about effective educational tenets and methodologies applicability. Additionally physicians voluntarily participated in an engagement reward program designed to acknowledge and reward ‘excellent’ interpersonal or clinical interactions of the resident in practice. ‘Excellence’ was broadly defined and subjective. Each volunteer received a $25 gift card to award to the resident being recognized. They were encouraged to have a face-to-face conversation with the resident explaining what was observed and pass along the gift card to the resident. Documentation of the interactions were submitted to the facilitator. The synopses were to include the criteria or circumstance that stood out to the attending and comments of the resident physician’s reaction. The program was not publicized beyond the attending faculty, and those who participated were encouraged to allow for these exchanges to occur organically and without time constraints so as not to create an environment of competition. At no point was the program discussed formally to the resident class nor were there limits to when or how many gift cards an attending could reward. One gift card was supplied at a time but any physician who requested another was furnished with same.
Results: During the pilot, 18 attending’s volunteered and 18 certificates were awarded to 15 residents. The program was well received and in Sept. 2017 was fully funded in order to distribute to the full faculty of 33 attendings: $825.00. Areas of acknowledgement included but were not limited to: patient care (acting on their feet in a clinical setting), global improvement, and collegial interactions. Both the attending and resident felt that the verbal interaction i.e. feedback regarding the recognition was the principal component. All participants both faculty and residents queried felt that this was a very positive experience.
