An internal medicine residency’s response to the COVID-19 crisis: caring for our residents while caring for our patients

Abstract

Background: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, internal medicine residencies have had to develop new teaching strategies and attend to wellness concerns. Providing front-line care for patients in a time of widespread crisis while maintaining attention to training has created unprecedented challenges. Objective: Our large community hospital based internal medicine residency sought to develop and evaluate a crisis response to the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic to meet our residents' educational and wellness needs. Methods: In March 2020, our residency developed a crisis plan for functioning during the COVID-19 pandemic. A brief survey was sent via email to our 149 residents to obtain their evaluation of how well their needs were being met by this response. Results: 92 (62%) residents completed the survey. 88% indicated their well-being needs were well met. Other components were also rated as successful: effective communication (86%), scheduling/staffing (78%), preparing residents for clinical service (77%), and educational needs (76%). Conclusions: Our residency crisis response to the COVID-19 pandemic was favorably evaluated by our residents in meeting their training and well-being needs. In future work we plan to seek longer-term and more objective measures to assess how residents fare during these challenging times, and to use lessons learned to prepare for future crisis situations.

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“… 11 Depending on the institution, either attendings or attending/resident teams were directly treating patients with COVID-19. 4,12 A proportion of residents had increased work hours, had greater odds of experiencing burnout, and may have been redeployed to patients outside their intended specialty. 9 …”

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