Fellow University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Background: At a high-risk delivery center with more than 10,000 births per year, Maternal Fetal Medicine (MFM) and Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine (NPM) fellows rarely perform joint inpatient perinatal counseling for pregnant people with serious fetal or maternal issues, despite this best practice recommendation. Joint counseling is thought to be beneficial and limit inconsistencies seen with independent counseling. Implementation of joint counseling supports shared decision making and medical team collaboration. Objective: Project objectives include building a reproducible perinatal counseling curriculum for MFM and NPM fellows modeling collaborative counseling, teaching and practicing critical communication skills, and ensuring topic specific medical knowledge. The project aims to increase participant comfort, knowledge, and skill level related to joint perinatal counseling and to increase the occurrence of joint perinatal counseling consults by 20% by September 1st, 2023, and show sustainability for 6 months. Design/Methods: This project was approved by the instructional Quality Review Committee for 9 MFM and 12 NPM fellows. The project is set to have a total of 6 educational sessions from August 2022 to February 2024. Communication skills based on VitalTalk methods and medical knowledge content are presented in pre-learning materials and didactic sessions. Simulation involved peer discussion, peer to peer practice of communication skills and standardized patient actors. The learning experiences are evaluated using pre/post surveys. Likert scale questions with ordinal data are analyzed via descriptive statistics and comparisons between groups to assess self-reported comfort, knowledge, and skill level. Follow up surveys assessing self-reported skill use and sustained comfort level are performed at 5 months and 1 year. Clinical chart review is done monthly to assess occurrence of inpatient MFM and NPM joint perinatal counseling consults. We define eligible consults as periviable or high-risk congenital anomalies.
