Is It All About the Form? Norm- vs Criterion-Referenced Ratings and Faculty Inter-Rater Reliability.

Little research to date has examined the quality of data obtained from resident performance evaluations. This study sought to address this need and compared inter-rater reliability obtained from norm-referenced and criterion-referenced evaluation scaling approaches for faculty completing resident performance evaluations. Resident performance evaluation data were examined from 2 institutions (3 programs, 2 internal medicine and 1 surgery; 426 residents in total), with 4 evaluation forms: 2 criterion-referenced (1 with an additional norm-referenced item) and 2 norm-referenced.

The Fuel Gauge: A Simple Tool for Assessing General Surgery Resident Well-Being.

Objective: Resident well-being is an increasingly relevant issue in medical education; however, there is no consensus on how to best measure well-being. The "fuel gauge," is a simple, easy-to-use tool developed to measure resident well-being and previously applied in an Internal Medicine Residency Program at our institution. The current study sought to evaluate its acceptability and usefulness in a surgery program.

Trauma Surgeon and Palliative Care Physician Attitudes Regarding Goals-of-Care Delineation for Injured Geriatric Patients.

Background: The value of defining goals of care (GoC) for geriatric patients is well known to the palliative care community but is a newer concept for many trauma surgeons. Palliative care specialists and trauma surgeons were surveyed to elicit the specialties' attitudes regarding (1) importance of GoC conversations for injured seniors; (2) confidence in their own specialty's ability to conduct these conversations; and (3) confidence in the ability of the other specialty to do so.

Methods: A 13-item survey was developed by the steering committee of a multicenter, palliative care-focused consortium and beta-tested by trauma surgeons and palliative care specialists unaffiliated with the consortium.

Burn Surgeon and Palliative Care Physician Attitudes Regarding Goals of Care Delineation for Burned Geriatric Patients.

Palliative care specialists (PCS) and burn surgeons (BS) were surveyed regarding: 1) importance of goals of care (GoC) conversations for burned seniors; 2) confidence in their own specialty's ability to conduct these conversations; and 3) confidence in the ability of the other specialty to do so. A 13-item survey was developed by the steering committee of a multicenter consortium dedicated to palliative care in the injured geriatric patient and beta-tested by BS and PCS unaffiliated with the consortium. The finalized instrument was electronically circulated to active physician members of the American Burn Association and American Academy for Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

Resident Fuel Levels: Reframing, Assessing, and Addressing Well-Being.

Background: To optimize resident learning, programs need to readily assess resident well-being. There is a lack of easy-to-use, acceptable instruments for this task.

Objective: We created a well-being "fuel gauge," and assessed the acceptability and feasibility of this weekly electronic communication pipeline for residents to report and discuss their well-being.