Psychological safety in medical education: A scoping review and synthesis of the literature.

PURPOSE: Psychological safety (PS) is the belief that the environment is safe for risk taking. Available data point to a lack of PS in medical education. Based on literature in other fields, PS in clinical learning environments (CLEs) could support trainee well-being, belonging, and learning. However, the literature on PS in medical education has not been broadly assessed. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In 2020, authors searched PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL, Scopus, ERIC, PsycInfo, and JSTOR for articles published prior to January 2020. Authors screened all search results for eligibility using specific criteria. Data were extracted and thematic analysis performed. RESULTS: Fifty-two articles met criteria. The majority focused on graduate medical education (45%), and 42% of studies took place within a CLE. Articles addressed organizational and team level constructs (58%), with fewer descriptions of specific behaviors of team members that promote or hinder safety. The impacts of safe environments for trainees and patients are areas in need of more exploration. DISCUSSION: Future research should focus on defining specific organizational and interpersonal leader behaviors that promote PS, seek to understand how PS is determined by individual trainees, and measure the impact of PS on learners, learning, and patient care outcomes.

Vax the Max, a Gamification Intervention for COVID-19 Vaccination Task Engagement in the Inpatient Setting.

The development of vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 has offered game-changing protection from severe disease and death from COVID-19. Despite efforts to vaccinate individuals in the ambulatory setting, a sizable minority of the US population remains unvaccinated for COVID-19. For unvaccinated patients, hospitalization for non-COVID-19 illness offers another opportunity for vaccination. In the summer of 2021, the authors noted that COVID-19 vaccination rate for medicine inpatients at their hospital had fallen to 5.3 vaccine doses administered per 4-week block. In response, they created Vax the Max, a gamification program of COVID-19 vaccination tasks where internal medicine resident teams were awarded points for completing these tasks. Residents were anonymously surveyed after participation. The hospital demonstrated higher rates of administering the initial COVID-19 vaccine dose and completing the vaccine series in the inpatient setting per 4-week plan-do-study-act cycle after implementation of Vax the Max (5.3 versus 8.8 doses per plan-do-study-act cycle). Among residents, 76.8% reported that Vax the Max spurred their COVID-19 task engagement, and 66% reported that a similar gamification model could be utilized for a different clinical task in the future. An increase was observed in the COVID-19 vaccination rate for medicine inpatients after launching the Vax the Max competition. This occurred in the setting of resident turnover every 4 weeks, which normally makes practice sustainment more challenging. Despite this, a high degree of engagement was produced by itinerant residents. There is potential to explore similar gamification approaches involving resident physicians in areas of quality improvement and patient safety.

An Interactive COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Workshop for Internal Medicine Residents and Medical Students.

Introduction Since being first identified in December 2019, SARS-CoV-2 has resulted in millions of illnesses and deaths worldwide. Despite the safety and availability of effective vaccines that offer protection from severe COVID-19 disease, a sizable minority of the United States population has reported COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and remains unvaccinated. Methods We developed an interactive workshop for internal medicine residents and medical students in which a framework is utilized to aid the subtyping of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Learners then interactively apply this framework through vaccine counseling in a role-playing exercise. Results The workshop increased confidence in the learner's ability to determine the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy subtype after participation in the workshop (53% preworkshop, 81% postworkshop, p=0.01). The workshop also increased reported confidence in tailoring COVID-19 vaccine counseling after participation in the workshop (60% preworkshop, 90% postworkshop, p=0.005). These gains were also seen when participant learners were compared with nonparticipant learners for both subtyping confidence (81% postworkshop, 26% nonparticipant, p<0.0001) and confidence in providing tailored counseling (90% postworkshop, 60% nonparticipant, p=0.004). Conclusion The implementation of our workshop correlated with an increase in the reported trainee confidence related to COVID-19 vaccine counseling. This offers a promising early step in developing educational programs that build trainee skills in this domain. More work is needed to establish robust curricula to support learners in reaching patients who express COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.