As we close out the blog series What is Physician Coaching? I wanted to highlight the use of coaching in Graduated Medical Education (GME). Undergraduate Medical Education (UME) has more widely adopted coaching following the AMA’s Faculty and Student Guidebooks on Coaching. They have proactively recorded basic coaching videos and many medical schools host training for UME faculty.
I want to review a few important points to set the stage for this blog.
And so, this is why I (and many others) feel that coaching will play a large role in improving the life of providers, which will improve healthcare overall. I believe it will take a multi-pronged approach to incorporate coaching into GME.
First, an overview of approaches, pros, and considerations. You can find more detail, including examples, following the overview below.
1. Internal coaching – physician coaches within the training program. Many leading universities, such as Duke, Harvard, Boston University, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins, have established programs to offer coaching to residents, fellows, and sometimes faculty. The approaches involve a mix of informal and formal coaching.
Informal - faculty obtain coaching skills and employ them intentionally at appropriate times within their various roles of educator, advisor, mentor, and sponsor.
Considerations: include the learning curve of when to utilize a coaching approach which will vary on situations and individuals. The temptation will be to use leading questions to align with the faculty’s agenda and consider it coaching. Faculty can grow in their ability to know when the situation will best lend itself to really empowering the trainee to decide their own best answers. I wrote a blog on it.
Formal - faculty have coaching as part of their official job description in which they meet with residents or faculty individually or as a group to engage them in formal coaching.
Considerations: Potential threats to internal coaching programs are less psychological safetyfor the trainee and more conflict of interest (COI) from the faculty coach. Confidentiality must be prioritized. (More on COI below that apply to all coaching approaches.)
These can be addressed by having faculty coaches out of specialty and/or faculty recusing themselves from serving on the CCC, resident evaluations, and certain discussions in faculty meetings to both protect the confidentiality and mitigate any related faculty bias.
Community-based programs do not often have the luxury of multiple specialty faculty to train out of specialty. Also, family medicine residents interact with most specialties, which doesn’t necessarily offer solid psychological safety even in a university setting.
Lastly, as most faculty are already short on admin time and often work multiple hours outside of business hours, care needs to be given to FTE- time, pay, and support to avoid further donated work and/or work compression.
Considerations for organizations – the continuity of the coaches may or may not be easily accessible.
Considerations specific to both forms of external coaching:
1. The program needs a faculty liaison to bring the local contextual understanding and help coordinate schedules. In family medicine, this is often the behavioral health faculty, wellness faculty lead, APD, or PD. Having an assigned administrative assistant and a lead resident (chief or wellness leader) is also very beneficial in helping with communication and structuring.
I particularly believe in the strategic alliance that can happen between the behavioral health faculty and the physician coach. And I want to stress that external coaching does NOT negate the importance of having a trained behavioral scientist on faculty. That’s one of the benefits most family medicine residencies benefit from but have notoriously been on the chopping block in recent years to save money and designate physician faculty to the ABFM requirement of behavioral health faculty. (I’ll likely offer a blog on this subject in the coming weeks).
2. Local contacts and mental health resources should be communicated to the coach in the rare instance that someone is unstable or has suicidal ideation.
3. Unless local, most external coaches will run virtual programs.
Considerations that apply to all GME coaching approaches.
That's the overview. I've recorded some examples of each type below with which I’m familiar, including a couple of unique approaches. I have first-hand experience with many of these since I coach with them (CFI, Better Together, AMWA) and others I know of from colleagues or presentations.
Example: Dr. Riva Kamat, a pediatric faculty member at Inova Children's Hospital in Virginia, is just one of many examples. Although not a formal part of her department position, she weaves in coaching at appropriate times, such as during feedback sessions. Other times she may have a more formal coaching session with a trainee or colleague for which she makes time She also uses her coaching skills when running peer support and debriefing meetings.
Pros: Depending on the manner of providing coaching skills, this can be scalable, quicker, and more cost-effective for hundreds of thousands of trainees and faculty.
Considerations: As above.
Examples: Mass General’s Physician Coach Program has been a role model, led by Dr. Kerri Palamara. She has dedicated time to set up and run the coaching program. They have also had many faculty attendings that are certified through Wellcoaches that coach across the institution for faculty members.
In addition, they have several faculty members that received novice coach training. Each year, volunteer faculty agree to 2-3 coach training sessions where they learn and practice. They are given a formal curriculum for each PGY year and assigned to 1-2 trainees They are paired with trainees outside their specialty to enhance the safe space and mitigate the tendency to advise. Over the course of 3 years, they have expanded their coaching tool kit and have a formalized curriculum for each PGY year. This has been replicated at 40 universities and through medical societies such as the Association of Women Surgeons and the American Academy of Pediatric Surgery. I understand that the faculty that receive the training are not necessarily allotted designated FTE to use their skillset but enjoy the process despite that. They are also available to train your faculty.
Dr. Bryant Murphy at UNC-Chapel Hill is leading coach training for some of the faculty (“Leader as Coach”) to the ICF-credentialled level by bringing in another external coach training program (Healthcare Coaching Institute). My understanding is that they, too, try to have coaching across specialties.
Next week, I will highlight yet another example, Dr. Marion McCrary and her formal role at Duke running their GME Coaching Program.
Pros: Having a cadre of internal physician coaches is more cost-effective than hiring external coaches routinely. They also understand many of the local contextual issues and are physically present.
Considerations: As above.
Sole Example: The unique approach is the brainchild of Dr. Adrienne Mann’s and Dr. Tyra Fainstad’s Better Together Coaching Program - from the University of Colorado who ran the study I mentioned a couple of weeks ago Blog and just concluded their multi-center RCT. They are currently enrolling UME, GME, Faculty, and APPs nationwide for this unique approach to bringing coaching into the medical education space (Deadline for AY 2023-2024 enrollment is June 1).
They are internal faculty coaches within CU Internal Medicine program and external to the multiple other programs. They have a team of certified coaches (of which I’m one), both internal and external to CU, some of whom hold faculty appointments at various institutions. To date, we have been volunteering our time.
The sessions are virtual, focused group coaching sessions in a webinar format, so participants only see the person being coached, one at a time. Often, participants choose to receive coaching anonymously through the Q&A feature. The dates and coaches' names are published and are offered at various times throughout each week to opt into.
They also have anonymous, asynchronous coaching via a securely published portal to benefit others who read them in similar situations.
The amazing part of what they offer is unbelievably accessible pricing. $10 per trainee, $50 per faculty member for the group coaching throughout the academic year, and a couple of individual 1:1 sessions.
Pros: One of the most affordable and scalable ways to bring coaching into GME with little hassle.
They also have published proven results.
Hearing that other trainees and faculty in other institutions struggle with the same issues can be validating.
Considerations: While helping the psychological safety and shared humanity aspects, the webinar style doesn’t allow for participant interaction and connection. Continuity with a specific coach is a little more challenging. There are limited individual coaching sessions currently.
Example: Providence Health Systems Oregon contracted with Coaching for Institutions in this manner. They provided coaching for physicians and APPs statewide, which includes four primary care residency programs, allowing many faculty members to opt-in and take advantage of group and individual coaching.
Coaching for Institutions hosts weekly CME didactic sessions, and biweekly small group sessions with individuals remaining in their assigned group for the duration, and each individual is afforded 6 individual coaching sessions. The pre-and post-surveys have shown such an incredible impact that Providence has had CFI run 4 different cohorts. Many of the individuals in small groups stay in touch afterward.
Pros: The program's structure is paid by the organization and free to the individual, with the understanding that the individual will be fiscally responsible if they aren’t engaged in the coaching program they opted into. This builds accountability, which has been very helpful in those early weeks when the individuals are still uncertain of coaching before they begin to reap the rewards. Individuals within the institution gain connections and understanding across specialties.
Considerations: As above for external coaching.
This is when a residency or fellowship program hires an external organization to come in and offer coaching.
Example: Coaching for Institutions has also offered external coaching to individual residency and fellowship programs. This uses a hybrid model to offer individual and group coaching.
Pros: They have a discount trainee package and offer several coaches for time convenience and fit with the flexibility of group, individual or hybrid models. They take care of most of the logistics. They provide a safe and confidential space with external coaches.
Considerations: As above.
This is what I offer. I partner with family medicine residency programs to offer hybrid coaching. Groups for faculty and/or groups for each PGY year (or occasionally all classes combined), plus individual coaching sessions for each physician. I ground each group session in a professional development and fulfillment topic. These also offer CME for the faculty.
Other external coaches do the same, such as Dr. Jessie Mahoney, who partners with various fellowship training programs, including Stanford’s Anesthesiology Fellows and MUSC’s Cardiology Fellows. She offers both group and individual coaching for the small cohort.
Pros: It’s a more intimate group setting with an individual training program, and often broken into classes for group sessions. The coach is consistent and builds rapport over time with the individual trainees. There is no risk for the coaching to influence an evaluation which adds to extra psychological safety.
Cons: As above.
I’ve had the unique ability to coach in one of the University of Washington’s Network of Family Medicine Residency’s Faculty development programs - The Hybrid UW/Madigan Longitudinal Faculty Development Program. Several community and university-based programs across the Pacific Northwest participate.
In it, I offer 4 group coaching sessions and individuals can opt into individual coaching sessions during the longitudinal program.
I plan to add in teaching some basic coaching skills that faculty can apply in their programs.
Pros: One faculty development network exposes many training programs to coaching. I hope this may lead to early adopters in each program finding what works best for them to bring coaching to their trainees and faculty. This is a scalable model to impact more individuals.
Cons: The physicians only have contact with the coach for the one year of their longitudinal faculty development program.
A note about para-training program coaching with which I’m familiar:
1. The American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) runs coaching programs for both attendings (AMWA Elevate) and residents (AMWA Evolve). (AMWA Ignite for medical students is now Ignite Med).
2. The Society of Teachers in Family Medicine has a Virtual Coaching program. It lists coaches and mentors – but several trained coaches volunteer a session or two to members of STFM for free.
So, while you can see there is not one right way to bring coaching into GME, the good news is that many models exist. Find the one that makes the most sense for your program and start the PDSA cycle.
What other approaches have you seen? What ideas do you have - especially for the less resourced community family medicine programs?
(Wow, throwing in examples made for the longest blog post I’ve written to date! Sorry about the formatting - Kajabi was very temperamental with indented bullet points. 🤷♀️)
Next week, as part of my monthly Guest Blog Interview Series, I will highlight Duke’s Coaching Program and one of its leaders, Dr. Marion McCrary.
Until then, have a joy-filled week! Tonya
I've given the talk to several audiences about coaching in GME. Reach out if you'd like me to present to your group.
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