Essential Foundational Education Research Methods Articles for Graduate Medical Educators: A Delphi Study.

Graduate medical educators interested in designing and conducting education research may seek foundational general overview articles on education research methods. We aimed to identify the most useful foundational education research methods articles for medical educators. We identified candidate articles through a 2020 Ovid MEDLINE literature search augmented by the authors' personal files and by cross-checking references of included articles.

Antithrombin III Levels and Outcomes Among Patients With Trauma.

Importance: Patients with trauma exhibit a complex balance of coagulopathy manifested by both bleeding and thrombosis. Antithrombin III is a plasma protein that functions as an important regulator of coagulation. Previous studies have found a high incidence of antithrombin III deficiency among patients with trauma.

EHR-Driven Delivery of EPA Assessments Significantly Improves Participation.

Introduction: Digital education tools are a cornerstone in the evolution to CBME through EPAs. Successful implementation requires understanding the variable impacts of EHR-driven delivery of EPAs, flexible digital device access to EPAs, and user-behavior trends.

Methods: Through a HIPAA compliant, flexible-device accessible, surgical education platform, general surgery training programs at 21 institutions collected EPA from July 2023 to April 2024.

Faculty and Resident Perspectives on the Implementation of Entrustable Professional Activities in General Surgery Residency.

Objective: This study aimed to identify what best practices facilitate implementation of Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) into surgical training programs.

Design: This is a mixed methods study utilizing both survey data as well as semi-structured interviews of faculty and residents involved in the American Board of Surgery (ABS) EPA pilot study.

Setting: From 2018 to 2020, the ABS conducted a pilot that introduced five EPAs across 28 general surgery training programs.

Five Key Articles on Curriculum Development for Graduate Medical Educators.

Curriculum development is an essential domain for medical educators, yet specific training in this area is inconsistent. With competing demands for educators' time, a succinct resource for best practice is needed. To create a curated list of the most essential articles on curriculum development to guide education scholars in graduate medical education.

Tracheostomies for respiratory failure are associated with a high inpatient mortality: a potential trigger to reconsider goals of care.

Introduction: Acute care surgeons are frequently consulted for tracheostomy placement in the intensive care unit (ICU). Tracheostomy may facilitate ventilator weaning and improve physical comfort. Short-term outcomes after tracheostomy are not well studied.

Faculty Entrustment and Resident Entrustability.

Importance: As the surgical education paradigm transitions to entrustable professional activities, a better understanding of the factors associated with resident entrustability are needed. Previous work has demonstrated intraoperative faculty entrustment to be associated with resident entrustability. However, larger studies are needed to understand if this association is present across various surgical training programs.

Goals of care are rarely discussed prior to potentially futile trauma transfer: Is it okay to say "No"?

Background: It is unknown how often the physician-to-physician trauma transfer conversation includes a discussion of patient goals of care (GOC). We hypothesized that physicians would rarely discuss GOC on transfer calls when faced with patients with catastrophic injuries.

Methods: We completed a retrospective case series of trauma patients transferred to an ACS-verified Level I trauma center between 2018 and 2022 who died or were discharged to hospice without surgical intervention within 48 hours.

"A Band-Aid Solution": Policy Maker and Primary Care Provider Perspectives on the Value of Attachment Incentives.

Approximately 15% of Canadians are without a primary care provider ("unattached"). To address "unattachment," several provinces introduced a financial incentive for family physicians who attach new patients. A descriptive qualitative approach was used to explore perspectives of patient access and attachment to primary care.

Time is Short: Tools to Integrate Palliative Care and Communication Skills Education into Your Surgical Residency.

The need to integrate palliative care (PC) training into surgical education has been increasingly recognized. Our aim is to describe a set of PC educational strategies, with a range of requisite resources, time, and prior expertise, to provide options that surgical educators can tailor for different programs. Each of these strategies has been successfully employed individually or in some combination at our institutions, and components can be generalized to other training programs.

Delay of fixation increases 30-day complications and mortality in traumatic pelvic ring injuries.

Purpose: While decreased time to fixation in femur fractures improves mortality, it remains unclear if the same relationship exists for pelvic fractures. The National Trauma Data Bank (NTDB) is a data repository for trauma hospitals in the United States (injury characteristics, perioperative data, procedures, 30-day complications), and we used this to investigate early, significant complications after pelvic-ring injuries.

Methods: The NTDB (2015-2016) was queried to capture operative pelvic ring injuries in adult patients with injury severity score (ISS) ≥ 15.

Integrating Surgical Palliative Care Into the Full Spectrum of Medical Education.

We describe our institutional approach to incorporating surgical palliative care education into the Undergraduate Medical Education, Graduate Medical Education and Continuing Medical Education spaces as a model to help guide similarly interested educators. We had a well-established Ethics and Professionalism Curriculum, but an educational needs assessment revealed that both the residents and faculty felt that additional training in palliative care principles was crucial. We describe our full spectrum palliative care curriculum, which begins with the medical students on their surgical clerkship and continues with a 4 week surgical palliative care rotation for categorical general surgery PGY-1 residents, as well as a Mastering Tough Conversations course over several months at the end of the first year.

What Should the Surgeons Do at the Family Meeting: A Multi-Disciplinary Qualitative Description of Surgeon Participation in Palliative Care Discussions.

Objective: National guidelines have suggested that quality surgical care should incorporate effective palliative care (PC). Numerous barriers to surgeon participation remain and the domains of optimal surgeon participation are unclear.

Design: Eight semi-structured and multi-professional focus groups with 34 total participants.

Peer-to-Peer Trauma-Informed Training for Surgical Residents Facilitated by Psychiatry Residents.

Objective: This article describes the implementation of trauma-informed care (TIC) didactic training, using a novel, interdisciplinary peer-to-peer teaching model to improve confidence surrounding trauma-informed practices in a surgical residency program.

Methods: Eight psychiatry residents and two medical students with a background in psychological trauma and TIC and an interest in medical education were recruited to participate in three 2-hour "train the trainer" sessions led by a national expert in TIC. Eight psychiatry residents and two medical students subsequently developed and delivered the initial TIC training to 29 surgical interns.

Supporting surgical residents learning clinical palliative care: Insights from multi-disciplinary focus groups.

Background: A shortage of palliative care (PC) sub-specialists highlights the need for quality PC provided by treating surgeons, although no established curriculum exists to teach surgical residents PC skills. To guide curriculum development, we sought to determine what modifiable factors contribute to surgical residents successfully providing PC.

Methods: Eight focus groups with 34 participants were conducted.

Teaching primary palliative care to general surgical residents: A novel pedagogical approach drawn from multi-disciplinary focus group data.

Background: Primary palliative care (PPC) is provided by the primary team and is essential for high-quality surgical care. There is a recognized PPC clinical and research need but little work on the optimal way to teach PPC to general surgery residents. We sought to define important factors of PPC pedagogy (i.

Sedation and analgesia needs in methamphetamine intoxicated patients: much ado about nothing.

Background: Methamphetamine (M) is a widely used, powerful sympathomimetic drug that produces significant CNS stimulation. Its use is associated with psychiatric disorders, abnormal brain chemistry, and cardiovascular disease. Pre-hospital M use is associated with increased intubation, intensive care unit admission, and hospital length of stay.

Critical decisions in the trauma intensive care unit: Are we practicing primary palliative care?

Background: Devastating injuries require both urgent assessment by a trauma service and early attention to patients' goals of care (GOC). American College of Surgeons Trauma Quality Improvement Program (TQIP) guidelines recommend an initial palliative assessment within 24 hours of admission and family meeting, if needed, within 72 hours. We hypothesize that a primary palliative care-based practice improves adherence to TQIP guidelines in trauma patients.

Chronic critical illness after hypothermia in trauma patients.

Objectives: Chronic critical illness (CCI) is a phenotype that occurs frequently in patients with severe injury. Previous work has suggested that inflammatory changes leading to CCI occur early following injury. However, the modifiable factors associated with CCI are unknown.

Validation of the Injured Trauma Survivor Screen: An American Association for the Surgery of Trauma multi-institutional trial.

Background: Psychological distress is common following a traumatic injury event. The Injured Trauma Survivor Screen (ITSS) was developed at a level 1 trauma center to assess for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive episode (MDE) following admission for a traumatic injury. The ITSS sensitivity and specificity were analyzed 1 to 3 and 6 to 9 months postinjury to test the validity across trauma centers.

Body Appreciation and Discontinuing Contraceptive Use Due to Concern About Weight Gain: A Brief Report.

This study explored the relationship between body appreciation and discontinuing contraception due to concern about weight gain. A racially and ethnically diverse sample of women, from the United States, ( = 494) was recruited online. Binomial logistic regression was used for analysis.

"It really presents a struggle for females, especially my little girl": Exploring fathers' experiences discussing body image with their young daughters.

Body dissatisfaction in children, particularly young girls, is a growing concern around the world. The home environment can have a strong influence on children's well-being, and parents may contribute to their children's positive or negative body image development. Nearly all research on parent influence on body image has focused on mothers, leaving fathers' attitudes and experiences poorly-understood.

Effective Palliative Care in the Trauma Setting.

A 55-year-old man undergoes emergent exploratory laparotomy and splenectomy following a motorcycle collision. Following surgery, he is found to have a traumatic brain injury requiring decompressive craniectomy and intracranial pressure monitoring. The patient then continues to have complications throughout his hospital course.