Building Team Resilience and Debriefing After Difficult Clinical Events: A Resilience Curriculum for Team Leaders

Abstract

Introduction Burnout is prevalent among medical trainees and faculty. Resilience, the ability to cope well with stress and thrive during challenges, has been a focus of initiatives to combat burnout. However, curricula teaching resilience skills are needed. Since residents experience challenging and stressful clinical events often, and would like to discuss these events with their teams, resilience skills may help trainees cope after such events. Additionally, resilience skills may help trainees address other challenges they face as team leaders. Leadership training is an important component of physician professional development. Methods This advanced resilience training curriculum consists of two interactive workshops that include didactics, skills practice, and reflection. The first workshop focuses on applying resilience skills to team leadership, while the second focuses on structured team debriefing after difficult clinical events. This curriculum is intended for learners who are health care team leaders, such as senior residents, fellows, or faculty. It may be used with learners who have completed introductory resilience training or with those without prior training. Results The curriculum was rated highly by senior residents, who reported feeling more comfortable leading their teams after difficult clinical events and talking about these events following this curriculum. The majority of residents thought the workshops should be continued. Discussion This novel curriculum teaches learners to apply resilience skills during team leadership and difficult clinical scenarios. It was well received by senior residents and may be used with a variety of learners across health professions and training levels.

Resident Burnout and Work Environment

“…An improved well-being, quality of life, resilience, and happiness are associated with reduced burnout (49); therefore, a wellness curriculum focusing on offering residents feasible and increase resilience and happiness is recommended (50). Furthermore, previous reports have also suggested that team debriefing and workshops after difficult clinical events may be useful for reducing resident burnout (51,52). Further studies that explore the effectiveness of intervention for burnout prevention are warranted.…”

Assessment of Clinical Leadership Training Needs in Senior Pediatric Residents

“… 38 - 41 Clinical leadership skills training would address the hidden curriculum by explicitly redefining appropriate standards of conduct and actively engaging physicians, ultimately leading to improved clinical outcomes. 2 , 3 , 42 …”

“…[38][39][40][41] Clinical leadership skills training would address the hidden curriculum by explicitly redefining appropriate standards of conduct and actively engaging physicians, ultimately leading to improved clinical outcomes. 2,3,42 Although we have successfully identified clinical leadership training needs, we understand that our focus groups face several limitations. The needs assessment was performed with pediatric residents, so they may not apply universally across other specialties; however, our findings align with those in the current literature, which are not exclusive to the field of pediatrics.…”

Empowering Residents to Process Distressing Events: A Debriefing Workshop

“…The first resource includes brief training in team debriefing as part of a larger workshop series focused on resilience training. 13 The second resource is a targeted peer-to-peer debriefing intervention for pediatric residents to perform in pairs. 14 While our workshop employed a similar debriefing framework, we emphasized the use of debriefing within patient care teams and thus included role-playing scenarios to be done in small groups.…”