Hospitalist Teaching Rounds for FUTURE

Flipping the Wards

Millennial learners prefer novel methods of delivery that are interactive and technology based.[7, 8, 9] Lectures and slide‐based presentations frequently do not feature the degree of interactive engagement that they seek, and methods such as case‐based presentations and simulation may be more suitable. The Khan Academy is a not‐for‐profit organization that has been proposed as a model for future directions for medical education.[18] The academy's global classroom houses over 4000 videos and interactive modules to allow students to progress through topics on their own time.[19] Teaching rounds can be similarly flipped such that discussion and group work take place during rounds, whereas lectures, modules, and reading are reserved for individual study.[18]

As time pressures shift the focus of rounds exclusively toward discussion of patient‐care tasks, finding time for teaching outside of rounds can be emphasized to inspire self‐directed learning. When residents need time to tend to immediate patient‐care issues, hospitalist attendings could take the time to search for articles to send to team members. Rather than distributing paper copies that may be lost, cloud‐based data management systems such as Dropbox (Dropbox, San Francisco, CA) or Google Drive (Google Inc., Mountain View, CA) can be used to disseminate articles, which can be pulled up in real time on mobile devices during rounds and later deposited in shared folders accessible to all team members.[20, 21] The advantage of this approach is that it does not require all learners to be present on rounds, which may not be possible with duty hours.

Using Documentation to Teach

Trainees report that one of the most desirable attributes of clinical teachers is when they delineate their clinical reasoning and thought process.[22] Similarly, Millennial learners specifically desire to understand the rationale behind their teachers' actions.[6] Documentation in the medical chart or electronic health record (EHR) can be used to enhance teaching and role‐model clinical reasoning in a transparent and readily available fashion.

Billing requirements necessitate daily attending documentation in the form of an attestation. Hospitalist attendings can use attestations to model thought process and clinical synthesis in the daily assessment of a patient. For example, an attestation one‐liner can be used to concisely summarize the patient's course or highlight the most pressing issue of the day, rather than simply serve as a placeholder for billing or agree with above in reference to housestaff documentation. This practice can demonstrate to residents how to write a short snapshot of a patient's care in addition to improving communication.

Additionally, the EHR can be a useful platform to guide feedback for residents on their clinical performance. Millennial learners prefer specific, immediate feedback, and trainee documentation can serve as a template to show examples of good documentation and clinical reasoning as well as areas needing improvement.[5] These tangible examples of clinical performance are specific and understandable for trainees to guide their self‐learning and improvement.

Technology‐Enabled Teaching

Using technology wisely on the wards can improve efficiency while also taking advantage of teaching methods familiar to Millennial learners. Technology can be used in a positive manner to keep the focus on the patient and enhance teaching when time is limited on rounds. Smartphones and tablets have become an omnipresent part of the clinical environment.[23] Rather than distracting from rounds, these tools can be used to answer clinical questions in real time, thus directly linking the question to the patient's care.

The EHR is a powerful technological resource that is readily available to enhance teaching during a busy ward schedule. Clinical information is electronically accessible at all hours for both trainees and attendings, rather than only at prespecified times on daily rounds, and the Millennial Generation is accustomed to receiving and sharing information in this fashion.[24] Technology platforms that enable simultaneous sharing of information among multiple members of a team can also be used to assist in sharing clinical information in this manner. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act‐compliant group text‐messaging applications for smartphones and tablets such as GroupMD (GroupMD, San Francisco, CA) allow members of a team to connect through 1 portal.[25] These discussions can foster communication, inspire clinical questions, and model the practice of timely response to new information.

Using Guerilla Teaching Tactics

Though time may be limited by work hours, there are opportunities embedded into clinical practice to create teaching moments. The principle of guerilla marketing uses unconventional marketing tactics in everyday locales to aggressively promote a product.[26] Similarly, guerilla teaching might be employed on rounds to make teaching points about common patient care issues that occur at nearly every room, such as Foley catheters after seeing one at the beside or hand hygiene after leaving a room. These types of topics are familiar to trainees as well as hospitalist attendings and fulfill the relevance that Millennial learners seek by easily applying them to the patient at hand.

Memory triggers or checklists are another way to systematically introduce guerilla teaching on commonplace topics. The IBCD checklist, for example, has been successfully implemented at our institution to promote adherence to 4 quality measures.[27] IBCD, which stands for immunizations, bedsores, catheters, and deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis, is easily and quickly tacked on as a checklist item at the end of the problem list during a presentation. Similar checklists can serve as teaching points on quality and safety in inpatient care, as well as reminders to consider these issues for every patient.

Rainy Day Teaching

Hospitalist teaching attendings recognize that duty hours have shifted the preferred time for teaching away from busy admission periods such as postcall rounds.[28] The limited time spent reviewing new admissions is now often focused on patient care issues, with much of the discussion eliminated. However, hospitalist attendings can be proactive and save certain teaching moments for rainy day teaching, anticipating topics to introduce during lower census times. Additionally, attending access to the EHRs allows attendings to preview cases the residents have admitted during a call period and may facilitate planning teaching topics for future opportunities.[23]

Though teaching is an essential part of the hospitalist teaching attending role, the Millennial Generation's affinity for teamwork makes it possible to utilize additional team members as teachers for the group. This type of distribution of responsibility, or outsourcing of teaching, can be done in the form of a teaching or float resident. These individuals can be directed to search the literature to answer clinical questions the team may have during rounds and report back, which may influence decision making and patient care as well as provide education.[29]

Embedding Teaching Moments Into Rounds

Dr. Francis W. Peabody may have been addressing students many generations removed from Millennial learners when he implored them to remember that the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient, but his maxim still rings true today.[30] This advice provides an important insight on how the focus can be kept on the patient by emphasizing physical examination and history‐taking skills, which engages learners in hands‐on activity and grounds that education in a patient‐based experience.[31] The Stanford 25 represents a successful project that refocuses the doctorpatient encounter on the bedside.[32] Using a Web‐based platform, this initiative instructs on 25 physical examination maneuvers, utilizing teaching methods that are familiar to Millennial learners and are patient focused.

In addition to emphasizing bedside teaching, smaller moments can be used during rounds to establish an expectation for learning. Hospitalist attendings can create a routine with daily teaching moments, such as an electrocardiogram or a daily Medical Knowledge Self‐Assessment Program question, a source of internal medicine board preparation material published by the American College of Physicians.[33] These are opportunities to inject a quick educational moment that is easily relatable to the patients on the team's service. Using teaching moments that are routine, accessible, and relevant to patient care can help shape Millennial learners' expectations that teaching be a daily occurrence interwoven within clinical care provided during rounds.

There are several limitations to our work. These strategies do not represent a systematic review, and there is little evidence to support that our approach is more effective than conventional teaching methods. Though we address hospitalists specifically, these strategies are likely suitable for all inpatient educators as they have not been well studied in specific groups. With the paucity of literature regarding learning preferences of Millennial medical trainees, it is difficult to know what methods may truly be most desirable in the wards setting, as many of the needs and learning styles considered in our approach are borrowed from other more traditional learning environments. It is unclear how adoptable our strategies may be for educators from other generations; these faculty may have different approaches to teaching. Further research is necessary to identify areas for faculty development in learning new techniques as well as compare the efficacy of our approach to conventional methods with respect to standardized educational outcomes such as In‐Training Exam performance, as well as patient outcomes.

Flipping the Wards

Millennial learners prefer novel methods of delivery that are interactive and technology based.[7, 8, 9] Lectures and slide‐based presentations frequently do not feature the degree of interactive engagement that they seek, and methods such as case‐based presentations and simulation may be more suitable. The Khan Academy is a not‐for‐profit organization that has been proposed as a model for future directions for medical education.[18] The academy's global classroom houses over 4000 videos and interactive modules to allow students to progress through topics on their own time.[19] Teaching rounds can be similarly flipped such that discussion and group work take place during rounds, whereas lectures, modules, and reading are reserved for individual study.[18]

As time pressures shift the focus of rounds exclusively toward discussion of patient‐care tasks, finding time for teaching outside of rounds can be emphasized to inspire self‐directed learning. When residents need time to tend to immediate patient‐care issues, hospitalist attendings could take the time to search for articles to send to team members. Rather than distributing paper copies that may be lost, cloud‐based data management systems such as Dropbox (Dropbox, San Francisco, CA) or Google Drive (Google Inc., Mountain View, CA) can be used to disseminate articles, which can be pulled up in real time on mobile devices during rounds and later deposited in shared folders accessible to all team members.[20, 21] The advantage of this approach is that it does not require all learners to be present on rounds, which may not be possible with duty hours.

Using Documentation to Teach

Trainees report that one of the most desirable attributes of clinical teachers is when they delineate their clinical reasoning and thought process.[22] Similarly, Millennial learners specifically desire to understand the rationale behind their teachers' actions.[6] Documentation in the medical chart or electronic health record (EHR) can be used to enhance teaching and role‐model clinical reasoning in a transparent and readily available fashion.

Billing requirements necessitate daily attending documentation in the form of an attestation. Hospitalist attendings can use attestations to model thought process and clinical synthesis in the daily assessment of a patient. For example, an attestation one‐liner can be used to concisely summarize the patient's course or highlight the most pressing issue of the day, rather than simply serve as a placeholder for billing or agree with above in reference to housestaff documentation. This practice can demonstrate to residents how to write a short snapshot of a patient's care in addition to improving communication.

Additionally, the EHR can be a useful platform to guide feedback for residents on their clinical performance. Millennial learners prefer specific, immediate feedback, and trainee documentation can serve as a template to show examples of good documentation and clinical reasoning as well as areas needing improvement.[5] These tangible examples of clinical performance are specific and understandable for trainees to guide their self‐learning and improvement.

Technology‐Enabled Teaching

Using technology wisely on the wards can improve efficiency while also taking advantage of teaching methods familiar to Millennial learners. Technology can be used in a positive manner to keep the focus on the patient and enhance teaching when time is limited on rounds. Smartphones and tablets have become an omnipresent part of the clinical environment.[23] Rather than distracting from rounds, these tools can be used to answer clinical questions in real time, thus directly linking the question to the patient's care.

The EHR is a powerful technological resource that is readily available to enhance teaching during a busy ward schedule. Clinical information is electronically accessible at all hours for both trainees and attendings, rather than only at prespecified times on daily rounds, and the Millennial Generation is accustomed to receiving and sharing information in this fashion.[24] Technology platforms that enable simultaneous sharing of information among multiple members of a team can also be used to assist in sharing clinical information in this manner. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act‐compliant group text‐messaging applications for smartphones and tablets such as GroupMD (GroupMD, San Francisco, CA) allow members of a team to connect through 1 portal.[25] These discussions can foster communication, inspire clinical questions, and model the practice of timely response to new information.

Using Guerilla Teaching Tactics

Though time may be limited by work hours, there are opportunities embedded into clinical practice to create teaching moments. The principle of guerilla marketing uses unconventional marketing tactics in everyday locales to aggressively promote a product.[26] Similarly, guerilla teaching might be employed on rounds to make teaching points about common patient care issues that occur at nearly every room, such as Foley catheters after seeing one at the beside or hand hygiene after leaving a room. These types of topics are familiar to trainees as well as hospitalist attendings and fulfill the relevance that Millennial learners seek by easily applying them to the patient at hand.

Memory triggers or checklists are another way to systematically introduce guerilla teaching on commonplace topics. The IBCD checklist, for example, has been successfully implemented at our institution to promote adherence to 4 quality measures.[27] IBCD, which stands for immunizations, bedsores, catheters, and deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis, is easily and quickly tacked on as a checklist item at the end of the problem list during a presentation. Similar checklists can serve as teaching points on quality and safety in inpatient care, as well as reminders to consider these issues for every patient.

Rainy Day Teaching

Hospitalist teaching attendings recognize that duty hours have shifted the preferred time for teaching away from busy admission periods such as postcall rounds.[28] The limited time spent reviewing new admissions is now often focused on patient care issues, with much of the discussion eliminated. However, hospitalist attendings can be proactive and save certain teaching moments for rainy day teaching, anticipating topics to introduce during lower census times. Additionally, attending access to the EHRs allows attendings to preview cases the residents have admitted during a call period and may facilitate planning teaching topics for future opportunities.[23]

Though teaching is an essential part of the hospitalist teaching attending role, the Millennial Generation's affinity for teamwork makes it possible to utilize additional team members as teachers for the group. This type of distribution of responsibility, or outsourcing of teaching, can be done in the form of a teaching or float resident. These individuals can be directed to search the literature to answer clinical questions the team may have during rounds and report back, which may influence decision making and patient care as well as provide education.[29]

Embedding Teaching Moments Into Rounds

Dr. Francis W. Peabody may have been addressing students many generations removed from Millennial learners when he implored them to remember that the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient, but his maxim still rings true today.[30] This advice provides an important insight on how the focus can be kept on the patient by emphasizing physical examination and history‐taking skills, which engages learners in hands‐on activity and grounds that education in a patient‐based experience.[31] The Stanford 25 represents a successful project that refocuses the doctorpatient encounter on the bedside.[32] Using a Web‐based platform, this initiative instructs on 25 physical examination maneuvers, utilizing teaching methods that are familiar to Millennial learners and are patient focused.

In addition to emphasizing bedside teaching, smaller moments can be used during rounds to establish an expectation for learning. Hospitalist attendings can create a routine with daily teaching moments, such as an electrocardiogram or a daily Medical Knowledge Self‐Assessment Program question, a source of internal medicine board preparation material published by the American College of Physicians.[33] These are opportunities to inject a quick educational moment that is easily relatable to the patients on the team's service. Using teaching moments that are routine, accessible, and relevant to patient care can help shape Millennial learners' expectations that teaching be a daily occurrence interwoven within clinical care provided during rounds.

There are several limitations to our work. These strategies do not represent a systematic review, and there is little evidence to support that our approach is more effective than conventional teaching methods. Though we address hospitalists specifically, these strategies are likely suitable for all inpatient educators as they have not been well studied in specific groups. With the paucity of literature regarding learning preferences of Millennial medical trainees, it is difficult to know what methods may truly be most desirable in the wards setting, as many of the needs and learning styles considered in our approach are borrowed from other more traditional learning environments. It is unclear how adoptable our strategies may be for educators from other generations; these faculty may have different approaches to teaching. Further research is necessary to identify areas for faculty development in learning new techniques as well as compare the efficacy of our approach to conventional methods with respect to standardized educational outcomes such as In‐Training Exam performance, as well as patient outcomes.

Flipping the Wards

Millennial learners prefer novel methods of delivery that are interactive and technology based.[7, 8, 9] Lectures and slide‐based presentations frequently do not feature the degree of interactive engagement that they seek, and methods such as case‐based presentations and simulation may be more suitable. The Khan Academy is a not‐for‐profit organization that has been proposed as a model for future directions for medical education.[18] The academy's global classroom houses over 4000 videos and interactive modules to allow students to progress through topics on their own time.[19] Teaching rounds can be similarly flipped such that discussion and group work take place during rounds, whereas lectures, modules, and reading are reserved for individual study.[18]

As time pressures shift the focus of rounds exclusively toward discussion of patient‐care tasks, finding time for teaching outside of rounds can be emphasized to inspire self‐directed learning. When residents need time to tend to immediate patient‐care issues, hospitalist attendings could take the time to search for articles to send to team members. Rather than distributing paper copies that may be lost, cloud‐based data management systems such as Dropbox (Dropbox, San Francisco, CA) or Google Drive (Google Inc., Mountain View, CA) can be used to disseminate articles, which can be pulled up in real time on mobile devices during rounds and later deposited in shared folders accessible to all team members.[20, 21] The advantage of this approach is that it does not require all learners to be present on rounds, which may not be possible with duty hours.

Using Documentation to Teach

Trainees report that one of the most desirable attributes of clinical teachers is when they delineate their clinical reasoning and thought process.[22] Similarly, Millennial learners specifically desire to understand the rationale behind their teachers' actions.[6] Documentation in the medical chart or electronic health record (EHR) can be used to enhance teaching and role‐model clinical reasoning in a transparent and readily available fashion.

Billing requirements necessitate daily attending documentation in the form of an attestation. Hospitalist attendings can use attestations to model thought process and clinical synthesis in the daily assessment of a patient. For example, an attestation one‐liner can be used to concisely summarize the patient's course or highlight the most pressing issue of the day, rather than simply serve as a placeholder for billing or agree with above in reference to housestaff documentation. This practice can demonstrate to residents how to write a short snapshot of a patient's care in addition to improving communication.

Additionally, the EHR can be a useful platform to guide feedback for residents on their clinical performance. Millennial learners prefer specific, immediate feedback, and trainee documentation can serve as a template to show examples of good documentation and clinical reasoning as well as areas needing improvement.[5] These tangible examples of clinical performance are specific and understandable for trainees to guide their self‐learning and improvement.

Technology‐Enabled Teaching

Using technology wisely on the wards can improve efficiency while also taking advantage of teaching methods familiar to Millennial learners. Technology can be used in a positive manner to keep the focus on the patient and enhance teaching when time is limited on rounds. Smartphones and tablets have become an omnipresent part of the clinical environment.[23] Rather than distracting from rounds, these tools can be used to answer clinical questions in real time, thus directly linking the question to the patient's care.

The EHR is a powerful technological resource that is readily available to enhance teaching during a busy ward schedule. Clinical information is electronically accessible at all hours for both trainees and attendings, rather than only at prespecified times on daily rounds, and the Millennial Generation is accustomed to receiving and sharing information in this fashion.[24] Technology platforms that enable simultaneous sharing of information among multiple members of a team can also be used to assist in sharing clinical information in this manner. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act‐compliant group text‐messaging applications for smartphones and tablets such as GroupMD (GroupMD, San Francisco, CA) allow members of a team to connect through 1 portal.[25] These discussions can foster communication, inspire clinical questions, and model the practice of timely response to new information.

Using Guerilla Teaching Tactics

Though time may be limited by work hours, there are opportunities embedded into clinical practice to create teaching moments. The principle of guerilla marketing uses unconventional marketing tactics in everyday locales to aggressively promote a product.[26] Similarly, guerilla teaching might be employed on rounds to make teaching points about common patient care issues that occur at nearly every room, such as Foley catheters after seeing one at the beside or hand hygiene after leaving a room. These types of topics are familiar to trainees as well as hospitalist attendings and fulfill the relevance that Millennial learners seek by easily applying them to the patient at hand.

Memory triggers or checklists are another way to systematically introduce guerilla teaching on commonplace topics. The IBCD checklist, for example, has been successfully implemented at our institution to promote adherence to 4 quality measures.[27] IBCD, which stands for immunizations, bedsores, catheters, and deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis, is easily and quickly tacked on as a checklist item at the end of the problem list during a presentation. Similar checklists can serve as teaching points on quality and safety in inpatient care, as well as reminders to consider these issues for every patient.

Rainy Day Teaching

Hospitalist teaching attendings recognize that duty hours have shifted the preferred time for teaching away from busy admission periods such as postcall rounds.[28] The limited time spent reviewing new admissions is now often focused on patient care issues, with much of the discussion eliminated. However, hospitalist attendings can be proactive and save certain teaching moments for rainy day teaching, anticipating topics to introduce during lower census times. Additionally, attending access to the EHRs allows attendings to preview cases the residents have admitted during a call period and may facilitate planning teaching topics for future opportunities.[23]

Though teaching is an essential part of the hospitalist teaching attending role, the Millennial Generation's affinity for teamwork makes it possible to utilize additional team members as teachers for the group. This type of distribution of responsibility, or outsourcing of teaching, can be done in the form of a teaching or float resident. These individuals can be directed to search the literature to answer clinical questions the team may have during rounds and report back, which may influence decision making and patient care as well as provide education.[29]

Embedding Teaching Moments Into Rounds

Dr. Francis W. Peabody may have been addressing students many generations removed from Millennial learners when he implored them to remember that the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient, but his maxim still rings true today.[30] This advice provides an important insight on how the focus can be kept on the patient by emphasizing physical examination and history‐taking skills, which engages learners in hands‐on activity and grounds that education in a patient‐based experience.[31] The Stanford 25 represents a successful project that refocuses the doctorpatient encounter on the bedside.[32] Using a Web‐based platform, this initiative instructs on 25 physical examination maneuvers, utilizing teaching methods that are familiar to Millennial learners and are patient focused.

In addition to emphasizing bedside teaching, smaller moments can be used during rounds to establish an expectation for learning. Hospitalist attendings can create a routine with daily teaching moments, such as an electrocardiogram or a daily Medical Knowledge Self‐Assessment Program question, a source of internal medicine board preparation material published by the American College of Physicians.[33] These are opportunities to inject a quick educational moment that is easily relatable to the patients on the team's service. Using teaching moments that are routine, accessible, and relevant to patient care can help shape Millennial learners' expectations that teaching be a daily occurrence interwoven within clinical care provided during rounds.

There are several limitations to our work. These strategies do not represent a systematic review, and there is little evidence to support that our approach is more effective than conventional teaching methods. Though we address hospitalists specifically, these strategies are likely suitable for all inpatient educators as they have not been well studied in specific groups. With the paucity of literature regarding learning preferences of Millennial medical trainees, it is difficult to know what methods may truly be most desirable in the wards setting, as many of the needs and learning styles considered in our approach are borrowed from other more traditional learning environments. It is unclear how adoptable our strategies may be for educators from other generations; these faculty may have different approaches to teaching. Further research is necessary to identify areas for faculty development in learning new techniques as well as compare the efficacy of our approach to conventional methods with respect to standardized educational outcomes such as In‐Training Exam performance, as well as patient outcomes.