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The REFLECT is a rigorously developed, theory-informed analytic rubric, demonstrating adequate interrater reliability, face validity, feasibility, and acceptability. The REFLECT rubric is a reflective analysis innovation supporting development of a reflective clinician via formative assessment and enhanced crafting of faculty feedback to reflective narratives.

A fundamental goal of medical education is the active, constructive, transformative process of professional identity formation (PIF). Medical educators are thus charged with designing standardized and personalized curricula for guiding, supporting, and challenging learners on the developmental professional identity pathway, including the process of socialization. The author of this Commentary provides an overview of foundational principles and key drivers of PIF supporting the being, relating, and doing the work of a compassionate and competent physician. Key elements of PIF including guided reflection, use of personal narratives, integral role of relationships and role modeling, and community of practice are viewed through various lenses of PIF theory and pedagogy. Questions informing the PIF discourse are raised, including interprofessional identity considerations. Central emergent themes of reflective practice, relationships, and resilience are described as supporting and reciprocally enhancing PIF. Overarching lessons include attending to learners' and faculty's PIF within a developmental trajectory of the professional life cycle; process and content within PIF curricula as well as learners' individual and collective voices; curricular/extracurricular factors contributing to socialization, self-awareness, development of core values, and moral leadership; integrating PIF domains within pedagogy; faculty development for skilled mentoring and reflective coaching; and implementing resilience-promoting skill sets as "protective" within PIF. Outcomes assessment including the impact of curricula on learners and on patient-centered care can be challenging, and potential next steps toward this goal are discussed.

Recent calls for an expanded perspective on medical education and training include focusing on complexities of professional identity formation (PIF). Medical educators are challenged to facilitate the active constructive, integrative developmental process of PIF within standardized and personalized and/or formal and informal curricular approaches. How can we best support the complex iterative PIF process for a humanistic, resilient health care professional? How can we effectively scaffold the necessary critical reflective learning and practice skill set for our learners to support the shaping of a professional identity?The authors present three pedagogic innovations contributing to the PIF process within undergraduate and graduate medical education (GME) at their institutions. These are (1) interactive reflective writing fostering reflective capacity, emotional awareness, and resiliency (as complexities within physician-patient interactions are explored) for personal and professional development; (2) synergistic teaching modules about mindful clinical practice and resilient responses to difficult interactions, to foster clinician resilience and enhanced well-being for effective professional functioning; and (3) strategies for effective use of a professional development e-portfolio and faculty development of reflective coaching skills in GME.These strategies as "bridges from theory to practice" embody and integrate key elements of promoting and enriching PIF, including guided reflection, the significant role of relationships (faculty and peers), mindfulness, adequate feedback, and creating collaborative learning environments. Ideally, such pedagogic innovations can make a significant contribution toward enhancing quality of care and caring with resilience for the being, relating, and doing of a humanistic health care professional.

The promotion of reflective capacity within the teaching of clinical skills and professionalism is posited as fostering the development of competent health practitioners. An innovative approach combines structured reflective writing by medical students and individualized faculty feedback to those students to augment instruction on reflective practice. A course for preclinical students at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, entitled "Doctoring," combined reflective writing assignments (field notes) with instruction in clinical skills and professionalism and early clinical exposure in a small-group format. Students generated multiple e-mail field notes in response to structured questions on course topics. Individualized feedback from a physician-behavioral scientist dyad supported the students' reflective process by fostering critical-thinking skills, highlighting appreciation of the affective domain, and providing concrete recommendations. The development and implementation of this innovation are presented, as is an analysis of the written evaluative comments of students taking the Doctoring course. Theoretical and clinical rationales for features of the innovation and supporting evidence of their effectiveness are presented. Qualitative analyses of students' evaluations yielded four themes of beneficial contributions to their learning experience: promoting deeper and more purposeful reflection, the value of (interdisciplinary) feedback, the enhancement of group process, and personal and professional development. Evaluation of the innovation was the fifth theme; some limitations are described, and suggestions for improvement are provided. Issues of the quality of the educational paradigm, generalizability, and sustainability are addressed.

Reflective capacity has been described as an essential characteristic of professionally competent clinical practice, core to ACGME competencies. Reflection has been recently linked to promoting effective use of feedback in medical education and associated with improved diagnostic accuracy, suggesting promising outcomes. There has been a proliferation of reflective writing pedagogy within medical education to foster development of reflective capacity, extend empathy with deepened understanding of patients' experience of illness, and promote practitioner well-being. At Alpert Med, "interactive" reflective writing with guided individualized feedback from interdisciplinary faculty to students' reflective writing has been implemented in a Doctoring course and Family Medicine clerkship as an educational method to achieve these aims. Such initiatives, however, raise fundamental questions of reflection definition, program design, efficacy of methods, and outcomes assessment. Within this article, we consider opportunities and challenges associated with implementation of reflective writing curricula for promotion of reflective capacity within medical education. We reflect upon reflection.

BackgroundCompassion fatigue among health care professionals has gained interest over the past decade. Compassion fatigue, as well as burnout, has been associated with depersonalization and suboptimal patient care. Professional caregivers in general are exposed to the risk of compassion fatigue (CF), burnout (BO) and low levels of compassion satisfaction (CS). While CF has been studied in health care professionals, few publications address its incidence among family physicians, specifically. The objectives of this study were to assess the prevalence and severity of CF among family practitioners (FPs) in the Negev (Israel’s southern region), evaluating the correlations between CF, BO and CS and their relations with socio-demographic variables and work related characteristics.MethodsSelf-report anonymous Compassion Satisfaction and Fatigue Test questionnaires (CSFT) measuring CF, BO, and CS were distributed among 194 family physicians at Clalit Health Services clinics in the Negev between July 2007 and April 2008. Correlations between CF, BO and CS were assessed. Multivariable logistic regression models with backward elimination were constructed.Results128 (66%) physicians responded. 46.1% of respondents scored extremely high and high for CF, 21.1% scored low for CS and 9.4% scored high for BO. Strong correlations were found between BO and CF (r = 0.769, p < 0.001), and between BO and CS (r = −0.241, p = 0.006), but no correlation was found between CS and CF. The logistic regression model showed that the only factor associated with a significantly increased risk for CF was former immigration to Israel. Increased risk for BO was associated with female gender, history of personal trauma and lack of academic affiliation. Higher CS was associated with holding management positions and teaching residents.Conclusions and policy recommendationsFamily physicians in the Negev are at high risk for CF, with the potential for CF- associated patient dissatisfaction, compromised patient safety and increased medical error. We propose creation of a CF educational and early intervention treatment program for family physicians and other health care professionals. Such programs would train facilitators of physician well-being and resiliency building. We also recommend analyzing contributing variables and organizational factors related to higher CF. Policy recommendations include integrating such programs within required risk management continuing medical education.

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