561 - Coaching in Humanism: A Pilot Program for Medical Students

Sunday, April 30, 2023

3:30 PM – 6:00 PM ET

Poster Number: 561
Publication Number: 561.326

Meagan Matuska, University of Chicago Division of the Biological Sciences The Pritzker School of Medicine, Roscoe, IL, United States; Diane Rogers, Contagious Change, Mesa, AZ, United States; Deanna Frings, IEG Experiences, West Allis, WI, United States; Nicola Orlov, University of Chicago Division of the Biological Sciences The Pritzker School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, United States

Presenting Author(s)

Meagan Matuska, BS (she/her/hers)

Medical Student
University of Chicago Division of the Biological Sciences The Pritzker School of Medicine
Roscoe, Illinois, United States

Background:
Empathy, humanism, and patient-centeredness are critical skills for physicians to develop, as they have been linked to improved patient satisfaction, enhanced patient comfort, and in some cases, significantly better health outcomes. Despite the established value of these traits, however, medical school curricula often fail to directly address these skills. No studies to date have assessed the ability of an academic coaching program to formally instruct medical students in empathy, humanism, and patient-centeredness.

Objective:
The objective of this study was to assess an academic coaching program’s impact on clinical medical students’ confidence in demonstrating [empathy, humanism, patient-centeredness] at the patient bedside.

Design/Methods:

Participants: Data collection for this project is ongoing. Participants in this project will be the 88 members of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine Class of 2024; to date, 44 of those third-year students have completed the academic coaching experience.

Coaching Program: The academic coaching program employed in this project was adapted from the hArt of Medicine – a pre-existing, evidence-based coaching framework – to directly address the skills of empathy, humanism, and patient-centeredness in medical students.

Assessment: To assess the impact of the coaching program, medical student participants were surveyed before and after their coaching experience. To provide evidence for instrument validity, the pre- and post-surveys were developed through an iterative process over the course of 2 months following guidelines from Academic Medicine. Survey results were collected through REDCap and analyzed in Excel.

Results:

To date, 44 third-year medical students have completed the coaching intervention and the associated surveys. Paired t-tests showed that medical student confidence in demonstrating empathy, humanism, and patient-centeredness at the bedside significantly increased following a coaching experience (p = 1.7 x 10^-8, 1.5 x 10^-11, 1.7 x 10^-13, respectively).

Conclusion(s):

Limitations: This pilot project may have limited statistical power due to a small sample size. Further, while the pre-post surveys for this project were developed so as to maximize their validity, we were unable to use a validated measure.

Conclusions: The results from this pilot project show that academic coaching may be an avenue through which medical schools can formally address empathy, humanism, and patient-centeredness, and thus should be explored broadly as a means to cultivate the ever-important communication skills of our future physicians.