A decade of faculty development for health professions educators: lessons learned from the Macy Faculty Scholars Program.

Faculty development (FD) programs are critical for providing the knowledge and skills necessary to drive positive change in health professions education, but they take many forms to attain the program goals. The Macy Faculty Scholars Program (MFSP), created by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation (JMJF) in 2010, intends to develop participants as leaders, scholars, teachers, and mentors. After a decade of implementation, an external review committee conducted a program evaluation to determine how well the program met its intended goals and defined options for ongoing improvement.The committee selected Stufflebeam's CIPP (context, input, process, products) framework to guide the program evaluation. Context and input components were derived from the MFSP description and demographic data, respectively. Process and product components were obtained through a mixed-methods approach, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data obtained from participant survey responses, and curriculum vitae (CV).The evaluation found participants responded favorably to the program and demonstrated an overall increase in academic productivity, most pronounced during the two years of the program. Mentorship, community of practice, and protected time were cited as major strengths. Areas for improvement included: enhancing the diversity of program participants, program leaders and mentors across multiple sociodemographic domains; leveraging technology to strengthen the MFSP community of practice; and improving flexibility of the program.The program evaluation results provide evidence supporting ongoing investment in faculty educators and summarizes key strengths and areas for improvement to inform future FD efforts for both the MFSP and other FD programs.

Enhancing Your Webside Manner: Optimizing Opportunities for Relationship-Centered Care in Virtual Visits.

In the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019, virtual visits have become the primary means of delivering efficient, high-quality, and safe health care while Americans are instructed to stay at home until the rapid transmission of the virus abates. An important variable in the quality of any patient-clinician interaction, including virtual visits, is how adroit the clinician is at forming a relationship. This article offers a review of the research that exists on forming a relationship in a virtual visit and the outcomes of a quality improvement project which resulted in the refinement of a "Communication Tip Sheet" that can be used with virtual visits. It also offers several communication strategies predicated on the R.E.D.E. to Communicate model that can be used when providing care virtually.

Communication Skills Training for Physicians Improves Patient Satisfaction.

BACKGROUND: Skilled physician communication is a key component of patient experience. Large-scale studies of exposure to communication skills training and its impact on patient satisfaction have not been conducted. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to examine the impact of experiential relationship-centered physician communication skills training on patient satisfaction and physician experience. DESIGN: This was an observational study. SETTING: The study was conducted at a large, multispecialty academic medical center. PARTICIPANTS: Participants included 1537 attending physicians who participated in, and 1951 physicians who did not participate in, communication skills training between 1 August 2013 and 30 April 2014. INTERVENTION: An 8-h block of interactive didactics, live or video skill demonstrations, and small group and large group skills practice sessions using a relationship-centered model. MAIN MEASURES: Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS), Clinician and Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CGCAHPS), Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE), Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), self-efficacy, and post course satisfaction. KEY RESULTS: Following the course, adjusted overall CGCAHPS scores for physician communication were higher for intervention physicians than for controls (92.09 vs. 91.09, p < 0.03). No significant interactions were noted between physician specialty or baseline CGCAHPS and improvement following the course. Significant improvement in the post-course HCAHPS Respect domain adjusted mean was seen in intervention versus control groups (91.08 vs. 88.79, p = 0.02) and smaller, non-statistically significant improvements were also seen for adjusted HCAHPS communication scores (83.95 vs. 82.73, p = 0.22). Physicians reported high course satisfaction and showed significant improvement in empathy (116.4 ± 12.7 vs. 124 ± 11.9, p < 0.001) and burnout, including all measures of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. Less depersonalization and greater personal accomplishment were sustained for at least 3 months. CONCLUSIONS: System-wide relationship-centered communication skills training improved patient satisfaction scores, improved physician empathy, self-efficacy, and reduced physician burnout. Further research is necessary to examine longer-term sustainability of such interventions.