Effects of a Focused Patient-Centered Care Curriculum on the Experiences of Internal Medicine Residents and their Patients.
J Gen Intern Med. 2011 Sep 27;
Authors: Ratanawongsa N, Federowicz MA, Christmas C, Hanyok LA, Record JD, Hellmann DB, Ziegelstein RC, Rand CS
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Traditional residency training may not promote competencies in patient-centered care. AIM: To improve residents' competencies in delivering patient-centered care. SETTING/PARTICIPANTS: Internal medicine residents at a university-based teaching hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: One inpatient team admitted half the usual census and was exposed to a multi-modal patient-centered care curriculum to promote knowledge of patients as individuals, improve patient transitions of care, and reduce barriers to medication adherence. PROGRAM EVALUATION: Annual resident surveys (N?=?40) revealed that the intervention was judged as professionally valuable (90%) and important to their training (90%) and offered experiences not available during other rotations (88%). Compared to standard inpatient rotation evaluations (n?=?163), intervention rotation evaluations (n?=?51) showed no differences in ratings for traditional medical learning, but higher ratings for improving how housestaff address patient medication adherence, communicate with patients about post-hospital transition of care, and know their patients as people (all p?<?0.01). On post-discharge surveys, patients from the intervention team (N?=?177, score 90.4, percentile ranking 97%) reported greater satisfaction with physicians than patients on standard teams (N?=?924, score 86.1, percentile ranking 47%) p?<?0.01). DISCUSSION: A patient-centered inpatient curriculum was associated with higher satisfaction ratings in patient-centered domains by internal medicine residents and with higher satisfaction ratings of their physicians by patients. Future research will explore the intervention's impact on clinical outcomes.
PMID: 21948228 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]