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The program is based on the MedRAP program, which was implemented at Baylor College of Medicine for 25 years.
The Clinician Program for Resilience (CPR) aims to improve the well-being and resilience of healthcare clinicians transitioning from graduate school to the post-graduate clinical learning environment.
The program provides guidelines for creating a safe place and a supportive community for meaningful interactions with peers and mentors, utilizing a structured, evolving curriculum to accelerate adaptation to a dynamic work environment.
Presents a wide range of strategies for responding to current and future healthcare crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic.
The resilience and well-being of all healthcare professionals is essential and benefits not only the clinicians but also their patients, and the entire healthcare system. Addressing those issues and supporting clinicians should be a priority for our entire community.
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the already immense challenges the healthcare industry was facing, and clinicians must be ready to handle the challenge of any pandemics that might arise in the future.
Investing in clinicians' professional development, improving their clinical learning environment, and creating a supportive learning community are all associated with reduced burnout. Programs that address these issues help foster healthy clinicians and contribute to better patient care and improved hospital efficiency.
Experts warn that the mental health of clinicians is declining—leading to higher incidents of depression and suicide—and patient safety is being compromised by suboptimal patient care in an over-burdened industry. It is imperative that we prepare for the future and develop interventions to preserve the well-being and resilience of healthcare professionals.
Helping Clinicians Help Patients: Facilitating the Transition into the Clinical Learning Environment and Beyond is a user-friendly web-based book that explains how to implement a comprehensive program to improve the well-being and resilience of healthcare clinicians and offers a structured approach to accelerating transition from medical education to the clinical work environment.
The approach presented in this book is based on MedRAP, a successful program that was implemented at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston, Texas for 25 years. MedRAP positively impacted the well-being and resilience of medical residents by providing a safe place for meaningful interactions with peers and mentors in a supportive community, utilizing a structured, evolving curriculum to improve adaptation to a dynamic work environment.
Implementation of MedRAP at BCM confirmed that investing in medical trainees’ well-being and resilience benefits not only the clinicians, but also their patients, and the healthcare institutions. Utilizing a structured approach tailored to anticipate problems that residents were likely to encounter accelerated adaptation to a dynamic work environment and helped them function more effectively in the system. Improving collaboration between clinicians and the healthcare team can result in improved efficiency of the hospital work environment, and thus improved patient care and satisfaction.
The Clinician Program for Resilience (CPR) aims to improve the well-being and resilience of healthcare clinicians transitioning from medical school to the post-graduate clinical learning environment. The program provides guidelines for creating a safe place and a supportive community for meaningful interactions with peers and mentors, utilizing a structured, evolving curriculum to accelerate adaptation to a dynamic work environment. CPR presents a wide range of strategies for responding to current and future health care crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic.
Trainees can provide honest feedback without fear of retribution. The peer support can reduce the sense of isolation and improve self-compassion. The opportunity for trainees to identify potential problems in the training program and to suggest solutions can lead to better teamwork and more effective and efficient patient care.
The informal training that usually occurs randomly on the wards is formalized into a structured curriculum. This is accomplished by identifying the problems trainees are likely to encounter and preparing the trainees to respond with effective strategies ahead of time, utilizing the collective wisdom of their senior clinician group leaders (“GLs”).
Trainees are involved in a specially-designed process (CQI), both monthly and annually, to improve their work and training environment, which also serves to facilitate interaction with the management of the healthcare team and hospital administrators. This process is designed to empower clinicians and to improve patient care and hospital efficiency in a collaborative and constructive manner with the management of the healthcare team and faculty.
Since mentors have a significant impact on trainees’ performance, the program utilizes senior clinicians as group leaders to structure a mentorship experience which provides insight strategies to handle ongoing challenges encountered by junior clinicians in their daily work on hospital words.
The program’s structure allows for early identification of any clinicians experiencing personal or professional difficulties and provides individual assistance, as well as internal and external referrals when needed. This is especially important during medical crises, such as our current pandemic.
"I highly recommend this book to all medical residents, resident program directors, department chairs, and administrators who are connected with the training of new physicians. Ms. Mushin has made an enormous contribution not only to resident training at Baylor, but also to the overall training of residents in the United States.”
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“The Resident Assistance Program has been an invaluable part of our internal medicine training program. The program meets not only the residents’ needs, but also supports management and institutional goals by helping residents function more effectively in the hospital work environment. Through the years, I have also received feedback from different healthcare team members who have felt that the program contributed to improved collaboration and efficiency in our hospitals, thus improving patient care. I have been discussing the program in my presentations to new applicants and feel it is a great asset to our recruitment process.”
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“During the 25 years of this program, I have witnessed firsthand the benefits for resident morale and team building. The QualityImprovement component was used to improve both education and patient care.With the introduction of the Core Competencies by ACGME, this program became essential to meeting the milestones expected for accreditation. This comprehensive and thoughtful program will benefit program directors as well as other institutional leaders and non-physician training programs. I highly recommend this excellent work.”
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“I personally have had the opportunity to participate in the MedRAP program as an intern and a senior resident mentor, and have observed the benefits from afar as a residency program director…In an ideal world, all residency programs should make programs such as MedRAP a core offering of their residents’ training.”
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“…after MedRAP had been operational for nearly a decade, I have witnessed the benefits such a program offers on multiple levels including that of individual residents, the training program, and the institution as a whole… for many programs, not instituting a program such as MedRAP is actually the more expensive decision.”
Helping Clinicians,
Medical Residents, & Fellows
Clinicians, Medical Residents,
& Fellows Helped
Program
Leaders
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