WIP 145 - Recommitting to Educational Conferences - A Quality Improvement Initiative to Improve Resident Engagement

Poster Number: WIP 145
Publication Number: WIP 145.2557

Background: Protected didactic educational time is a vital part of resident training. At our institution, resident attendance at conferences has recently declined. Our residency program requires attendance at 70% of daily Morning Report and Noon Conference educational series. Furthermore, recent technological advances have shifted team member communication from paging, a one-directional form of communication, to Vocera, which allows back-and-forth messaging. This has potentially lowered the threshold for various team members to reach out to residents, thus increasing interruptions during required educational conferences. Literature shows that more interruptions negatively impact retention of educational material.

Objective: To improve resident engagement in structured educational time by increasing the percent of residents achieving the expected 70% attendance and decreasing the number of non-emergent interruptions during conference. Specifically, we aim to achieve a goal of 90% of residents achieving the expected attendance goal and decreasing the number of interruptions in the form of pages or Vocera messages during conferences by 50%.

Design/Methods: Quality improvement methods will be used for this project, which was exempt from IRB approval. Baseline data shows median morning report and noon conference attendance of 27% and 14%, respectively, and average number of pages during conferences of 25 and 36, respectively. The initial interventions are ongoing and include an incentive to the resident team with the highest conference attendance each month and meeting with nursing leadership to spread awareness of protected resident educational time. Additional planned interventions include individualized emails to residents not meeting the 70% attendance goal monthly, a reminder page to all residents and team members prior to conferences, attendance at morning nursing huddle weekly by chief residents to remind team members of conference times, and laminated cards on each clinical unit computer reminding all staff to limit non-urgent messages to residents during educational time.