Getting out of silos: an innovative transitional care curriculum for internal medicine residents through experiential interdisciplinary learning

Abstract

Background: Care transitions are common and highly vulnerable times during illness. Physicians need better training to improve care transitions. Existing transitional care curricula infrequently involve settings outside of the hospital or other health care disciplines.

Intervention: We created a curriculum to teach internal medicine residents how to provide better transitional care at hospital discharge through experiential, interdisciplinary learning in different care settings outside of the acute hospital, and we engaged other health care disciplines frequently involved in care transitions.

Setting/participants: Nineteen postgraduate year-1 internal medicine trainees at an academic medical center in an urban location completed experiences in a postacute care facility, home health care, and outpatient clinics.

Program description: The 2-week required curriculum involved teachers from geriatric medicine; physical, occupational, and speech therapy; and home health care, with both didactic and experiential components and self-reflective exercises.

Program evaluation: The curriculum was highly rated (6.86 on a 9-point scale) and was associated with a significant increase in the rating of the overall quality of transitional care education (from 4.09 on a 5-point scale in 2011 to 4.53 in 2012) on the annual residency program survey. Learners reported improved knowledge in key curricular areas and that they would change practice as a result of the curriculum.

Conclusions: Our transitional care curriculum for internal medicine residents provides exposure to care settings and health care disciplines that patients frequently encounter. The curriculum has shown positive, short-term effects on learners' perceived knowledge and behavior.