Debriefing Training for Healthcare Learners: Learning to Process Distressing Events Together

Debriefing Training for Healthcare Learners: Learning to Process Distressing Events Together

Academic Year:
2018 - 2019 (June 1, 2018 through May 31, 2019)
Funding Requested:
$10,000.00
Project Dates:
-
Overview of the Project:
Healthcare professionals are likely to be exposed to traumatic events and emotional distress repeatedly during their training and careers. However, many learners report receiving limited or no training in coping with patient deaths and other distressing events, which can contribute to isolation, professional stress, moral or ethical distress, and burnout. The proposed project seeks to fill an important training gap in how distressing events in healthcare settings are identified and discussed. The Departments of Psychiatry, Palliative Care, Clinical Ethics, and the Office of Counseling and Workplace Resilience propose an innovative, interactive, and multidisciplinary training initiative to teach healthcare learners essential skills for debriefing. The debriefing workshop is a 2-hour training session in which skills are discussed, modeled, and practiced. The workshop provides a unique opportunity for self-reflection and active learning, as well as an inclusive forum that recognizes the diverse roles, responses, and experiences of healthcare team members and learners. Debriefing sessions are effective in addressing the emotional impact of distressing events, and can improve concentration, morale, work engagement, and individual and team performance, which are critical components of learning. Funding will allow for the refinement of training materials, assessment of the implementation strategy, and partnership with academic divisions and educators to create multidisciplinary learning opportunities. The project will also contribute to Michigan Medicine and GME priorities regarding learner, faculty, and staff well-being and resilience.
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:
  • Determine if a debriefing curriculum (developed by Govinden et al 2019), including a workshop, debriefing pocket guide, instructional videos and other associated resources, can be generalized to different specialties and disciplines beyond the Pediatric Residency Program
  • Adapt the debriefing curriculum so that it may be applied in-person and virtually and study how participants may experience the debriefing curriculum in these two formats
Project Achievements:
  • Implementation of debriefing workshop and associated educational resources was feasible, well accepted and resulted in improved attitudes by faculty and staff in various disciplines and specialties
  • Individuals with a medical background or non-clinical background reported greater value and improved attitudes following the debriefing workshop, as compared to mental health or psychosocial care background, although all participants highly valued the workshop and had very positive views of debriefing and the workshop - The project team was able to deliver five workshops during the project period, 2 in-person workshops prior to the pandemic and 3 virtual workshops following the pandemic, each of 4-hours duration
  • The five workshops were able to serve 210 participants with 88 participants completing pre-and post-workshop surveys
  • The project team is currently finishing a manuscript highlighting pre- and post-workshop survey data from five workshops delivered from 2019-2021
Continuation:
The project in its current form was not continued beyond 2021. However, the project team continues to deliver annual debriefing workshops to the Pediatric Residency, as well as ad hoc workshop trainings as requested by units and groups through requests via the Office of Counseling and Workplace Resiliency
Dissemination:
- The findings of this project will be disseminated through the publication of a peer-reviewed manuscript that is intended to be submitted in November 2023
- Once the manuscript is accepted for publication, it will be shared with the Office of Counseling and Workplace Resiliency for dissemination
- We also hope that this publication, along with the experience gained in implementing the five workshops as part of this project, will lead to ongoing delivery of these workshops and potentially a regular offering through the Office of Counseling and Workplace Resiliency
Advice to your Colleagues:
- There is tremendous value in debriefing adverse clinical events and giving a structured, confidential and facilitated state to process the thoughts and emotions related to these events
- The debriefing, and its associated training, can be effectively and sustainably delivered either in-person or virtually to a diverse group of specialties, disciplines as well as to non-clinical staff
- The well-accepted, feasible, organized model presented by Govinden et. al. can by sustainably delivered with high fidelity, low-cost to support care teams in processing adverse or distressing
care events.