UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
Health Sciences Center
Salt Lake City, Utah
Team Contact/Coordinator: Sarah Croskell, M.D.
E-mail: scroskell@med.utah.edu
Phone: 801/581-6264
Fax: 801/585-2365
Faculty Development Needs to Address at the Models That Work Conference
We propose to develop such a collaboration between our residency training program and the pediatricians in a healthcare provider organization.
Preliminary Needs Assessment Plan
We believe that optimal preparation of pediatric residents to enter and succeed in our rapidly evolving healthcare market will require a collaboration between traditional faculty in academic settings and community practitioners with expertise in the systems we refer to as "managed care." We propose to develop such a collaboration between our residency training program and the pediatricians in a healthcare provider organization recently purchased by our University's Faculty Practice Organization.
Incorporating managed care systems, specifically a former staff model HMO, into an Academic Faculty Development Model is an exciting challenge. Recently the University purchased a local HMO for expansion of the University's health network. The incorporated managed care system involves a current enrollment of 140,000 covered lives, seven clinical sites and over 50 providers of which five are pediatricians. Their needs for faculty development are unknown.
The physicians in this new organization, University Health Network (UHN), are very enthusiastic about their potential new roles in supporting University missions in teaching and research. Though one of their pediatricians recently completed an academic general pediatric fellowship at out institution, the remaining physicians have little or no experience or training in academics or teaching. We are excited about the opportunity to develop a new alternative for resident training that would take advantage of the enthusiasm of these preceptors and the outstanding expertise of this organization in numerous aspects of managed care and quality improvement. Developing these new faculty into knowledgeable and excellent teachers represents an acute and, with the anticipated growth of this network, an ongoing need.
* Our preliminary needs assessment plan is driven by our plan to place pediatric residents with the pediatricians as early as July 1999. A needs assessment of the current practices and personnel will occur through initial interviews and site visits by our team. We will gather important data regarding 3 areas: system information, patient issues and preceptor needs. System information includes the availability of space, details of scheduling, and ability to incorporate residents. Patients issues such as information on patient numbers and types of patients seen will be needed to plan for resident placement. Preceptor needs will include not only the strengths and weaknesses of the potential preceptors, but the perceived needs for becoming educators and preceptors. This will include reviewing their own continuity experience, their teaching philosophies and styles, and their desires for training in specific aspects of resident education and providing feedback. Following initial interviews, the team will review the findings and choose specific goals and personnel on which to concentrate our future efforts. Though we anticipate initial assignments of only one or two residents, we expect the entire pediatric faculty at (UHN) will participate in the program.
* The anticipated formal faculty development plan will include didactic and interactive workshops for teaching in the ambulatory setting, patient recruitment specific to the resident, incorporation of evidence based education into a managed care setting, continuos quality improvement, and eventually, training for office based research. We anticipate using nationally available resources for Community based Clinical Teaching from Ken Roberts, M.D. Our team leader, Sarah E. Croskell, is applying to participate in the National Pediatric Faculty Development Program in Community Based Clinical Teaching Track led by Dr. Roberts. The training will include key issues for this project such as skills in conducting workshops, developing and maintaining community based programs, and clinical teaching in community settings. That training is expected to commence in early 1999.
We also intend to incorporate the organization's existing systems for continuous quality improvement into the development, assessment, and improvement of this training program. We anticipate that this will be an integral part of the continuity experience for the residents, giving them experiential training for ongoing improvement of their own practices. As part of this, we will seek the opinions of the organization's leaders concerning the educational needs for training in managed care systems, specifically what will the pediatricians need to know to successfully and efficiently enter the managed care workplace.
This pilot will take advantage of multiple aspects of the conference program. The Faculty Development Program will need to take place off-site from the University and need to be tailored to meet the scheduling needs of the Pediatricians. Effective and Efficient Strategies for teaching in the Ambulatory Setting will be key to the success of these preceptors, especially with the busy schedules of pediatricians practicing in manage care settings. Evaluation of programs and consistency of experience will be essential to assessing the success of this project. These evaluation skills will also be instrumental in evaluating the Faculty Development program implemented in this non-traditional site.
