Objective
Patient suicide is a common experience in psychiatry residency, and its effects on trainees can be profound. There are currently no ACGME Common Program Requirements for education about patient suicide, and a need exists for evidence-based curricula to prepare residents for this difficult outcome.
Methods
A comprehensive patient suicide curriculum was developed utilizing multiple modes of delivering content, including a training designed to foster built-in support among peers in the healthcare workplace. The content was delivered at intervals over the course of the 2019–2020 academic year for 43 psychiatry residents at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Pre- and post-curriculum surveys were obtained to assess the resident experience of the new curriculum.
Results
Twenty-seven residents completed the pre-curriculum survey and 25 completed the post-curriculum survey. Results demonstrated statistically significant improvements in ratings of preparedness to deal with the loss of a patient by suicide, preparedness to support a co-resident who has experienced the death of a patient by suicide, program-level support for residents, understanding systems-level and quality processes, and knowledge of what steps to take if finding out a patient has completed suicide.
Conclusions
A multimodal approach incorporating understanding emotional reactions, provision of support, delineation of procedural issues, and education regarding quality and risk management considerations was effective at improving resident preparedness to cope following a patient suicide.
Background The ability to provide feedback is a developable faculty skill; however, it is unclear how academic rank impacts experiences with feedback delivery. Methods A survey was distributed to 1258 physicians of all academic ranks at a large academic medical center. Questions explored the respondent's feedback delivery beliefs and barriers. Results In total, 96% of respondents agreed feedback is important to resident education. Higher academic rank correlated with increased comfort with feedback delivery, and 89% of respondents experienced at least 1 barrier to feedback delivery. Conclusion Feedback experiences vary across academic ranks, with full professors being more comfortable with feedback delivery and less likely to experience barriers.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.