Implementing an Experiential Telehealth Training and Needs Assessment for Residents and Faculty at a Veterans Affairs Primary Care Clinic.

Background: The transition to telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed a lack of preexisting telehealth training for clinicians. As a workplace-based simulation methodology designed to improve virtual clinical skills, announced standardized patients (ASPs) may help meet evolving educational needs to sustain quality telehealth care.

Objective: We describe the development and implementation of an ASP program to assess and provide feedback to resident and faculty clinicians in virtual practice, and report on performance, feasibility, and acceptability.

Design and comparison of a hybrid to a traditional in-person point-of-care ultrasound course.

Background: Traditional introductory point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) courses are resource intensive, typically requiring 2-3 days at a remote site, consisting of lectures and hands-on components. Social distancing requirements resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic led us to create a novel hybrid course curriculum consisting of virtual and in-person components.

Methods: Faculty, chief residents, fellows and advanced practice providers (APPs) in the Department of Medicine were invited to participate in the hybrid curriculum.

Design and evaluation of the I-SCAN faculty POCUS program.

Background: Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is becoming widely adopted with increasing accessibility of courses. Little is known about the optimal design of the introductory course or longitudinal training programs targeting hospitalists that are critical to success.

Methods: Hospitalists at four academic sites participated in a two-day introductory course and a longitudinal phase comprising clinical POCUS practice, clip uploading with online feedback, hands-on teaching, and monthly ultrasound conferences.

A workshop to train medicine faculty to teach clinical reasoning.

Background Clinical reasoning (CR) is a core competency in medical education. Few studies have examined efforts to train faculty to teach CR and lead CR curricula in medical schools and residencies. In this report, we describe the development and preliminary evaluation of a faculty development workshop to teach CR grounded in CR theory.

Panel Management to Improve Smoking and Hypertension Outcomes by VA Primary Care Teams: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Panel Management can expand prevention and chronic illness management beyond the office visit, but there is limited evidence for its effectiveness or guidance on how best to incorporate it into practice.

Objective: We aimed to test the effectiveness of incorporating panel management into clinical practice by incorporating Panel Management Assistants (PMAs) into primary care teams with and without panel management education.

Design: We conducted an 8-month cluster-randomized controlled trial of panel management for improving hypertension and smoking cessation outcomes among veterans.

Reason for hospital admission: a pilot study comparing patient statements with chart reports.

Providers and patients bring different understandings of health and disease to their encounters in the hospital setting. The literature to date only infrequently addresses patient and provider concordance on the reported reason for hospitalization, that is, whether they express this reason in similar ways. An agreement or common ground between such understandings can serve as a basis for future communication regarding an illness and its treatment.

Developing a toolkit for panel management: improving hypertension and smoking cessation outcomes in primary care at the VA.

Background: As primary care practices evolve into medical homes, there is an increasing need for effective models to shift from visit-based to population-based strategies for care. However, most medical teams lack tools and training to manage panels of patients. As part of a study comparing different approaches to panel management at the Manhattan and Brooklyn campuses of the VA New York Harbor Healthcare System, we created a toolkit of strategies that non-clinician panel management assistants (PMAs) can use to enhance panel-wide outcomes in smoking cessation and hypertension.