Initiatives and Projects

Education and Quality Improvement begins and ends with teamwork and communication.  Medicine allows as a clear focus of our attention...the patient.  Surgery is especially dependent on teamwork to ensure a smooth deployment of patient centered, technically proficient, and keen clinical decision making.  As the clinical and education background environment in medical training becomes more complex, it is most important to train together and be mindful of the patients and learners at the center of all our efforts.

Interprofessional In-situ Team Training in the Operating Room

Surgery, Anesthesia, and the Stanford Operating Room has banded together to conduct monthly interprofessional in-situ simulations that results in debriefs that espouses and promotes speaking up in crisis situations of all in the OR setting.  This program, funded by the Risk Authority, has expanded into a platform that aims at culture change in the operating room.  The emphasis is on communication and teamwork.  Process improvement at a grass roots level has been the amazing result of these simulations.  This platform is being sought by other areas of the hospital for patient safety and culture change. This program is being integrated into the standard work of the interventional platform at Stanford Healthcare.

Blended Learning in Surgery Core Clerkship

Curricular change six years ago that utilizes out of class videos and in class participation of core clerkship medical students in weekly case discussions and skills sessions.  Six modules that consist of a pre-test quiz to introduce the student to the mindset of solving clinical problems in each of five content areas. The video contents are then viewed prior to an in class session around two case stems. Chalk talk style discussions with these cases are done by faculty content experts. Skills sessions cap these in person sessions. Post tests re-enforce the learning just done. The areas covered are: pain management, colorectal, pancreatic/biliary, breast, foregut/acute care surgery, and trauma. Each in class session is on Tuesday afternoons from 2-6 pm and regardless of site brings all the students on the core clerkship to one place in order to espouse a clerkship identity and cohesion for the students that often is missing during clerkships in medical school today.

Combating Medical Student Mistreatment

Medical student mistreatment is ubiquitous in various learning environments in medical school. Most commonly tracked and reported to and by the AAMC graduation questionnaire this phenomena can adversely affect students and their ability to learn in the clinical workplace portion of their education. A ubiquitous mismatch of communication and expectations are often at the heart of this learning environment challenge. The student mistreatment program is in-bedded within the core surgery curriculum.  The mistreatment program utilizes videos for discussion in week 2 of the clerkship to empower the students for advocacy and reporting. Weekly checks and a debrief during the last week of the clerkship helps to promote the advocacy for the preservation of a conducive learning environment in all core clerkships.