Pragmatic Mentoring Strategies for the Busy Surgeon Scientist.

OBJECTIVE: The value of research mentorship in academic medicine is well-recognized, yet there is little practical advice for how to develop and sustain effective mentoring partnerships. Gaining research skill and mentorship is particularly critical to success in academic surgery, yet surgeon scientists are challenged in their mentorship efforts by time constraints and lack of education on how to mentor. To address this gap, this study explored the strategies that award-winning faculty mentors utilize in collaborating with their medical student mentees in research. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: For this qualitative study, the authors invited physician recipients of an institution-wide mentorship award to participate in individual, semi-structured interviews during July and August 2018. Following interview transcription, the authors independently coded the text and collaboratively identified common mentoring strategies and practices via a process of thematic analysis. RESULTS: Nine physician mentors, representing a mix of genders, medical specialties and types of research (basic science, clinical, translational, and health services), participated in interviews. The authors identified 12 strategies and practices from the interview transcripts that fell into 5 categories: Initiating the partnership; Determining the research focus; Providing project oversight; Developing mentee research competence; and Supporting mentee self-efficacy. CONCLUSION: Award-winning mentors employ a number of shared strategies when mentoring medical trainees in research. These strategies can serve as a guide for academic surgeons who wish to improve their research mentoring skills.

Study protocol for a Community Health Worker (CHW)-led comprehensive neighborhood-focused program for medicaid enrollees in detroit.

Residents of low income neighborhoods disproportionately experience poor health, and many have unmet social needs. Clinical trials have shown the efficacy of Community Health Worker (CHW) programs in improving outcomes for a variety of health conditions. An important next step is developing and evaluating financially sustainable CHW program models in real-life settings. This program evaluation examines health care utilization among participants in a geographically targeted program led by salaried CHWs from three Medicaid health plans. Beneficiaries who reside in the Cody Rouge neighborhood of Detroit and had more than 3 Emergency Department (ED) visits or at least 1 ambulatory care-sensitive hospitalization in the prior 12 months are eligible for the program. Health plan CHWs assigned to the program reach out to eligible beneficiaries to provide an assessment; link them to resources; and provide follow-up. At 12-month follow up, claims data on ED visits, ambulatory care-sensitive hospitalizations, primary care visits, and related costs will be compared between beneficiaries who participated and eligible beneficiaries randomized to receive usual outreach. We hypothesize that patients enrolled in the CHW intervention will experience a reduction in acute care usage resulting in cost savings compared to those receiving usual health plan outreach. This study is among the first to evaluate the impact on health care utilization of augmented services delivered by health plan CHWs for high-utilizing health plan members as part of a health plan-community-academic partnership. This study will provide important information on CHW program sustainability and provide insights into effective implementation of such programs. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT03924713.