Thursday, November 12, 2020

Learning to Care for Those in Harm’s Way – Educational Innovations from The Uniformed Services University School of Medicine

From the 11/6/2020 newsletter


Guest Director’s Corner


Learning to Care for Those in Harm’s Way – Educational Innovations from The Uniformed Services University School of Medicine

by Louis Pangaro, MD, MACP


For this week’s special Veteran’s Day issue Director’s Corner, Dr. Kalet invited Dr. Louis Pangaro, interim dean of the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine and medical education scholar to describe “America’s medical school” and its lessons for us all …

 

It is my privilege to comment on the contributions of the Uniform Services University School of Medicine to advance in how we educate doctors. Our school is directly funded by the federal government to produce physicians who will serve the country in the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, or Public Health Service. This notion of service is implicit in our school’s motto, “Learning to care for those in harm’s way.

A commitment to public service is made by students in all medical schools in the country, but our innovative model of service in return for education is even more specific. After completing graduate medical education training, all of our students have an obligation to remain in national service for at least another seven years. Scholarships to medical school are not uncommon, and it is worth noting that our students not only have no tuition but are paid as active-duty officers in one of our uniformed services. Thus, they have no financial burden to make up in the decade or two after medical school, and their careers choices are not based on debt. We hope that the USU model will be used by more and more medical schools.

This long-term commitment gives rise to another unique aspect of our school, in that our graduates will, with few exceptions, do their specialty training in graduate military medical education programs and, after this, they will have at least seven years of further commitment to remain in the Military Health System (MHS) or in the Public Health Service. At a minimum, our students are in our own system for fourteen years, and most stay longer. This gives USU an extraordinary laboratory for studying the outcomes of medical education over time, and we have our own dedicated program, the Long-Term Career Outcomes Study, designed to do just this. We now also have graduate degree programs (masters level and PhD) to provide the educational leadership needed to study the relationship between education and the care given to the nearly ten million beneficiaries in our large military health care system.

As medical educators will understand, this give us a laboratory to study our graduates long term. As you would expect, we have always placed an emphasis on competence and the readiness of graduates to perform in graduate medical education in our own programs and, eventually, to serve in combat, natural disasters, and humanitarian missions around the globe to provide, as one might say, “good medicine in bad places.”


Why we developed the RIME Framework

One of our innovations in the 1990s to support this competency-based approach was to move away from using numerical rating scales for student progress in clinical rotations to a descriptive vocabulary of students’ progress, known as the “RIME framework” for “Reporter-Interpreter-Manager-Educator.” This framework supplemented the commonly used analytic frameworks (which divide competence into knowledge, skills and attitudes) into roles, which synthesize those domains. (More recently, Milestones and Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) have used such a synthetic approach.) RIME captures the basic rhythm of clinical work (history and physical – assessment – plan) and capitalizes on our clinical reasoning processes, which internalizes patterns of illness or, in this case, stages of professional competence. In other words, our teachers are not asked “to give a grade” for their students, but to “diagnose” or classify the levels of RIME proficiency in which the student has shown reliability. Studies of the RIME scheme from USU and other schools have shown it has a reliability and validity as good and perhaps better than commonly used alternatives.


The challenges of assuring educational quality across multiple sites and the importance of face-to-face sessions between clerkship directors and faculty members

One of the reasons it was important for USU to have an intuitive, performance, behaviorally- based evaluation framework was that we have for decades had core clinical clerkships far from our home base in Bethesda, Maryland. (We have clerkships in San Antonio, San Diego, Honolulu and other places across the country.) While all medical student schools struggle with consistency across their local regions, the LCME has held USU accountable for such inter-site consistency at great distances. Hence, we have made something of a science of this problem. The combination of the intuitive RIME scheme and face-to-face conversations with teachers has been a major component of our process.

At our institution, clerkship directors hold face-to-face conversations with faculty every few weeks to discuss their own students in a form of “case-based faculty development,” with their own students as the “cases.” These “formal evaluation sessions” were introduced at USU by my own mentor, Gordon Noel, three decades ago, and we believe that they remain the state-of-the-art in the assessment of students on clinical rotations. It may be obvious that teachers will tell you what they won’t write down, and our studies show that the process doubles the chance we will pick up cognitive or professional issues. Moreover, in a form of multi-source feedback, the clerkship director and the teachers agree on the next steps for the students, which will be looked at again at the next evaluation session. So, we have credible evaluation, we generate feedback and we calibrate the faculty all in the same session in what my colleague, Paul Hemmer, calls the “triple play.”

While the RIME scheme has been adopted in many medical schools across the country, the use of these regularly held evaluation sessions has been less popular, probably because of the time commitment for teachers and clerkship directors, approximately fifteen minutes for assessment and then fifteen minutes to generate feedback per student. With students dispersed in many hospitals, the work load is shared across on-site clerkship directors.


The Education Committee and its role in determining the need for remediation

The use of the RIME framework and then the calibration of faculty in using it are fostered by oversight of the process by an education committee review of all pass-fall grading decisions of students identified in the evaluation sessions. This innovation is at the top-level of the three-tiered system in which the clerkship directors who run these on-site evaluation sessions are themselves calibrated by a group of senior colleagues who meet on a regular basis, timed to the students’ schedule to review performance, and to make any determination of a failing grade or need for remediation. The departmental education committee has representatives at the clerkship level from the pre- clerkship clinical courses, from the sub internships, and from our graduate medical education program directors involved in the decision. (Such a process has recently been adopted as a national standard for GME in the form of competency committees.) The process separates not just the teacher, but also the clerkship director herself, from making a pass/ fail decision. While not relieving individual teachers from evaluating how successfully their own students are progressing, it does separate them from the “grading process” that many teachers find emotionally difficult.


Systems and simulation in military medical training

A systems approach has been inherent in how students and faculty understand their roles in the larger military healthcare system. From our first graduating classes in the 1980s, our students have learned how their own work in our academic health center tertiary hospitals is related to medical care at the site of injury in combat settings thousands of miles away, and how triage, stabilization and evacuation back to the United States is all part of their system. This innovation may not have been widely applicable in the first decades of the school, but now all medical schools are actively looking at health systems science.

Our school has been heavily invested in simulation for decades and the Val G. Hemming Simulation Center has been a world leader in development and application of medical simulation programs. Unusual is our Wide Area Virtual Environment (“WAVE”) where students practice resuscitating and stabilizing a patient for transfer in a setting in which the sounds of bullets flying and helicopters landing are all around them. Our final year students participate in the unique Operation Bushmaster, a combat-like exercise in which they are put into a remote, forest-like setting to practice teamwork, leadership and military medicine. Several students on a team will in this simulation be the operating surgeons, several others triage officers, several supply officers, and several will maintain the periphery against possible hostile action. (First year students play the moulaged casualties).


“A promise of duty and expertise”

We have for years used the idea of professionalism as a promise of duty and expertise introduced to our students by Dr. Edmund Pellegrino. Our educational innovations are intended to foster in our students the promise which they make to their patients and to our nation. For our faculty the promise is to foster progressive independence and to evaluate or students’ readiness for the next level of responsibility. We think of USU as “America’s medical school” with a unique role in our society and we hope that some of our innovations may be useful to other schools.

Thank you very much for the opportunity of sharing the system of which we are very proud. The innovations which I have mentioned are described in more detail in the annotated bibliography attached.


Link to Dr. Pangaro’s annotated bibliography

Link to Dr. Pangaro’s faculty page.


Louis N. Pangaro, MD MACP is the Interim Dean and Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University (USU) F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine

The opinions and assertions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Uniformed Services University or the Department of Defense.

Friday, November 6, 2020

My Dad was a Veteran

From the 11/6/2020 newsletter


Editor’s Corner

 

 

My Dad was a Veteran

 

 

Bruce H. Campbell, MD FACS – Editor-in-Chief of the Transformational Times

 

 

In this Veteran’s Day issue of the Transformational Times, you will meet several people who have offered their time and talents in service of country. Some, in the earliest stages of their careers, share their motivations; others, who have retired, offer their reflections. All have taken the oath, just as my father once did, to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Like our newsletter contributors today, my father inspired me.

 

 

My dad was a veteran. He spent over three years on a light cruiser, the USS Santa Fe CL-60, during World War II. His ship earned thirteen battle stars, seeing action from the Aleutians to the Philippines. I have no idea what that experience was like.

 

Similar to many other citizen-soldiers of his era, Dad never planned to be in the military. He grew up on a Missouri farm during and after the Depression, knowing only that he wanted a different kind of life. He worked his way through college and graduate school by scraping together enough money to, as he said, “keep body and soul together.” Like everyone else, his life was upended on December 7, 1941. 

 

He enlisted in the Navy shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. His mother, back on the farm, bemoaned his choice. “Why didn’t you join the Army like your brother?” she cried. “Navy boys all drown like rats!” 

 

After ninety days of Officer’s Candidate School, newly commissioned Ensign Ray W. Campbell, USNR was on his way to the Pacific. He served in many capacities on the ship from gunnery officer to officer of the deck. He occasionally assisted the ship’s doctor (who had trained as a gynecologist) in surgery. He helped direct rescuers after the attack on the USS Franklin, and was nearly killed when a kamikaze plane barely missed the gun turret where he was standing. He played the ship’s small portable organ to accompany Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish services. He wrote letters to parents of sailors who died. His ship became part of the occupation fleet after the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war. He returned home to a different world.

 

My dad was twenty-three when he enlisted and twenty-seven when the war ended in 1945. For perspective, I never lived more than a hundred miles from where I was born until I was thirty. Between twenty-three and twenty-seven, I was finishing medical school, starting residency, and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. At the age when he was fulfilling his service as part of the Greatest Generation, I was exploring the depths of imposter syndrome. 

 

My dad spoke very little about his experiences. At home, we looked occasionally at a book he had helped compile about his ship’s campaigns. There were a few mementos around the house. He called a shipmate once in a while. He didn’t march in parades or join the VFW. I wish I had asked him why but, now, it is too late. 

 

Because my dad spent little time talking about his Navy service, I am encouraged that there are VA-based programs that help veterans to tell their stories. I count myself fortunate to have met many veterans throughout my career at the Zablocki VAMC. 

 

I have the utmost respect and admiration for the veterans for whom I have cared and for this week’s Transformational Times contributors. I hope you will pause and sit for a while with each of the essays. Please listen to their stories and then take time to honor the veterans in your life. 

 

 

 

Bruce H. Campbell, MD FACS is a Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology and Communication Sciences at MCW. He is on the Faculty Pillar of the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education. 

 

 

 

 

Take 3: In the Service of Fellow Veterans

 From the 11/6/2020 newsletter


Take 3: In the Service of Fellow Veterans


Dr. Jeffrey Jackson shares his insights about being a retired Army officer and serving veterans at the Clement J Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee.
 
Jeffry L. Jackson, MD MPH 

 

 

1. Some people have observed that there is an esprit de corps within the VA, especially between the patients.  How do you explain that?

 

The VA purposefully instills a strong sense of mission.  Ask nearly any VA employee and they can recite the mission statement, “to care for those who shall have borne the battle,” initially uttered by Abraham Lincoln.  From the initial orientation to daily meetings, VA employees are constantly reminded of their duty to serve veterans.  
 
This esprit de corps is also present among veterans.  The purpose of boot camp in the military is to indoctrinate a sense of belonging, that the person standing beside you is responsible for keeping you alive in combat, an obligation that is mutual.  A significant portion of veterans have seen combat in WWII, Korea, Vietnam and now in the Middle East.  Nothing creates a sense of comradeship like going into harm’s way. Unfortunately, nearly everyone who deployed into a combat theatre saw a friend die or be severely injured.  This strong sense of purpose and sacrifice leaves an indelible mark.

 

 

2. What is the best advice you could give to students and residents who provide care for veterans?  What key insights could make their care for veterans better?

 

Veterans are no different than nonveterans in what they want from their providers.  If the patient believes you have their welfare at heart, if they trust that you are motivated to do your best for them, they will respond to you. Communication is at the heart.  Be open and honest and human. Admit when you don’t know something. Seek out their underlying motivation for the visit, and as best you can, honestly deal with it.  Do not judge veterans, many have physical and psychological scars, and some have made bad choices.  Listen to their stories.
 
 
3. Tell us about a moment during your service in the Army that you are most proud of (or that contributed to your development as a caring physician)?

 

I spent most of my military career at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  I was a senior resident and was working in the ER when we gathered around the television to hear George Bush announce that the United States was going to repel Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.  The United States he said, but he really meant the United States’ military forces - young men and women.  Nearly all the military casualties made their way back to Walter Reed. I witnessed the impact of combat on soldiers and their families; a family at the bedside of a soldier with a horrific brain injury, clinging desperately to hope and misinterpreting every minimal sign of responsiveness.  I avoided elevator bank 4 because that’s where the amputees would gather in their wheelchairs, coming back from our amputee center.  It broke my heart to see so many being pushed by their mothers or their 18-year-old girlfriends.  They barely looked old enough to shave. 

Old men make the decision to go to war, young men and women pay the price.  

I once made the trip out to Dover to watch the dead being returned home.  Each flag-draped coffin was moved from the plane to the mortuary, solemnly accompanied by an honor detail.  On my visit, family members and several high-ranking officials were in attendance.  I only made the trip once and cannot imagine the resilience it must take to be assigned this duty.  I attended several funerals at Arlington Cemetery.   On one occasion, President Bush was in attendance.  I was proud to serve a Commander in Chief who was openly weeping. 

I spent 21 years in the Army.  What I am most proud of was the sense of purpose, honor and sacrifice that I witnessed.
 
 
Jeffrey Jackson, MD MPH is a Professor in the Department of Medicine at MCW. His practice is at the Zablocki VA Medical Center. 

 

Editor: Kathleen Fletcher, MD MA

 

Veteran’s Day Reflection

 From the 11/6/2020 newsletter

Perspective 
 
Veteran’s Day Reflection
 
 
Kenneth Lee, MD – Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
 
 
Dr. Lee, a retired Army Colonel, shares his perspective on how we all learn to serve our military veterans …
 
 




“Thank you for taking care of my patients.”  These words meant something to me when I addressed nurses, therapists, dieticians, pharmacists, and many other disciplines at the Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC), especially when Veteran’s Day came around. 
 
 But now, I no longer say these words.  Why?  Let’s see……
 
I have been a physician in the VA system since 1997 and my whole medical career has been at the VAMC. I retired from the military after twenty-seven years of service in 2013.  I spent 27 years in the National Guard with one active duty deployment. Now, I am a retired military veteran. I have seen leaderships change, colleagues move around, and viewpoints challenged and accepted over the years.  The one thing that has stayed consistent in my life: The veterans.  
 
I interact with different generations of veterans on a daily basis.  Some are sick.  Some are healthy. Some are disabled.  Some are athletes.  And, some are just friends.  They are all serviced by the VA.  So how are we doing on that front?
 
Some time ago, a second-year medical student approached me to help create an introductory curriculum on veteran care to be taken BEFORE medical students start their rotations at the VA.  Without much thought, I agreed to be her mentor.  Three years later, this is a fully formed, elective inter-professional educational curriculum created in partnership between MCW’s schools of medicine and pharmacy. This curriculum covers the life of military service member during peacetime and war, the structures of the DOD and VA systems, the development of interviewing skills with veterans, and much more.  You can see the eagerness of the students in the classroom as they absorb the information the teachers and veterans share with them.
 
During this COVID-19 pandemic, there have been countless gestures by the community, despite the suffering, to provide comfort needed by the veterans. Boxed lunches for VA staff during the height of COVID -19 surge, generous donation of PPEs so we can continue to be safe during the care of the veterans, and many words and notes of encouragement.  
 
 It seems that during the worst of times, the veterans are never forgotten. 
 
What else? You can tell your stories.  You have them.
 
So, why do I no longer say the words, “Thank you for taking care of my patients”?  I always thought of the veterans as my brothers and sisters. I never had second thoughts. But it was just one of those things that was part of the military/veteran culture.  Just accepted it.  But recently, I find myself truly belonging to this family.  So, I now say….
 
“Thank you for taking care of my fellow veterans.”
 
 

Kenneth Lee, MD is an Associate Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at MCW who works and teaches at the Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee. He served as the Commander of the Army’s Company B, 118th Area Support Medical Battalion in Iraq. 
 
You can read more of his personal story and motivation for caring for veterans here
.