Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Pulling Together And Pushing Apart: Tides Of Tension In The Icu Team, Laura Hawryluck, Sherry Espin, Kim Garwood, Cathy Evans, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

No abstract provided.

Error Or "Act Of God"? A Study Of Patients' And Operating Room Team Members' Perceptions Of Error Definition, Reporting, And Disclosure, Sherry Espin, Wendy Levinson, Glenn Regehr, G. Baker, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

BACKGROUND: Calls abound for a culture change in health care to improve patient safety. However, effective change cannot proceed without a clear understanding of perceptions and beliefs about error. In this study, we describe and compare operative team members' and patients' perceptions of error, reporting of error, and disclosure of error. METHODS: Thirty-nine interviews of team members (9 surgeons, 9 nurses, 10 anesthesiologists) and patients (11) were conducted at 2 teaching hospitals using 4 scenarios as prompts. Transcribed responses to open questions were analyzed by 2 researchers for recurrent themes using the grounded-theory method. Yes/no answers were compared across groups …

Context, Conflict, And Resolution: A New Conceptual Framework For Evaluating Professionalism, Shiphra Ginsburg, Glenn Regehr, Rose Hatala, Nancy Mcnaughton, Alice Frohna, Brian Hodges, Lorelei Lingard, David Stern

Lorelei Lingard

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Gap Between Knowledge And Behavior: A Qualitative Study Of Clinician Action Following An Educational Intervention, Tara Kennedy, Glenn Regehr, Jay Rosenfield, S. Roberts, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

PURPOSE: Many medical education interventions improve clinicians' knowledge but fail to change behavior. The authors exposed this knowledge-behavior gap through standardized clinical interactions, thus allowing in-depth exploration of the contributing factors. METHOD: A typical evidence-based educational intervention in one clinical domain (early signs of autism) was administered to family medicine residents at the University of Toronto in 2001-02, and change in knowledge was assessed through a multiple-choice test. Six to eight weeks later, participants' relevant knowledge was documented, and their clinical behavior was observed during four interactions with standardized patients. Factors producing a knowledge-behavior discrepancy were then explored using semistructured …

Childhood Immunization. How Knowledgeable Are We?, Helen Heurter, Karen Breen-Reid, Leya Aronson, Lorelei Lingard, David Manning, E. Ford-Jones

Lorelei Lingard

No abstract provided.

'You Learn Better Under The Gun': Intimidation And Harassment In Surgical Education, Laura Musselman, Helen Macrae, Richard Reznick, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

BACKGROUND: Medical literature has documented a high prevalence of intimidation and harassment in the educational context. However, the research has failed to adequately delineate the nature of these phenomena as well as the different ways in which diverse actors perceive the behaviours in question.

METHODS: Based on qualitative methodology anchored in a social constructionism framework, how teachers (staff surgeons) and learners (surgical residents) define intimidation and harassment were documented and compared. In addition, teachers' and learners' perceptions of the impact of these behaviours on the learning environment, including their effects on the socialisation of surgeons in training, were examined.

FINDINGS: …

Basing The Evaluation Of Professionalism On Observable Behaviors: A Cautionary Tale, Shiphra Ginsburg, Glenn Regehr, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

PROBLEM STATEMENT AND BACKGROUND: The evaluation of professionalism often relies on the observation and interpretation of students' behaviors; however, little research is available regarding faculty's interpretations of these behaviors.

METHOD: Interviews were conducted with 30 faculty, who were asked to respond to five videotaped scenarios in which students are placed in professionally challenging situations. Behaviors were catalogued by person and by scenario.

RESULTS: There was little agreement between faculty about what students should and should not do in each scenario. Abstracted principles (e.g., honesty, altruism) were defined and applied inconsistently, both between and within individual faculty. There was no apparent …

Technical Skills In Paediatrics: A Qualitative Study Of Acquisition, Attitudes And Assumptions In The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Susan Bannister, Robert Hilliard, Glenn Regehr, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

PURPOSE: While the effective acquisition of technical skills is essential for excellent paediatric care, little is known about how technical skills are learned in the paediatric setting. This study sought to describe and theorise the variables influencing technical skills acquisition in a tertiary care neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) inpatient setting. METHODOLOGY: Using non-participant field methodology, paediatric residents and their teachers (nurses, respiratory therapists, neonatal staff and fellows) were observed at various times in the NICU for 8 weeks. Thirteen semistructured interviews with these teachers and learners and 1 focus group of additional learners were conducted and used to triangulate …

Before The White Coat: Perceptions Of Professional Lapses In The Pre-Clerkship, Shiphra Ginsburg, Natasha Kachan, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

BACKGROUND: It has been shown that the professional development of clinical clerks is influenced by their experiences of unprofessional behaviour, but the perceptions of pre-clerkship students have received relatively little attention. Our purpose was to develop a greater contextual understanding of the situations in which pre-clerkship students encounter professional challenges, and to investigate what pre-clerkship students consider to be professional lapses in these situations.

METHODS: We conducted 4 focus groups (n = 22 students); transcripts were analysed by 3 researchers using grounded theory.

RESULTS: Pre-clerkship students reported lapses in the areas of communicative violation, role resistance, objectification, accountability and harm, …

To Be And Not To Be: The Paradox Of The Emerging Professional Stance, Shiphra Ginsburg, Glenn Regehr, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

PURPOSE: Understanding how students resolve professional conflict is essential to teaching and evaluating professionalism. The purpose of this study was to refine an existing coding structure of rationalizations of student behaviour, and to further our understanding of students' reasoning strategies in the face of perceived professional lapses.

METHODS: Anonymous essays were collected from final year medical students at two universities. Each essay included a description of a specific professional lapse, and a consideration of how the lapse was dealt with. Essays were analysed using grounded theory. The resulting coding structure was applied using NVivo software.

RESULTS: Twenty essays, containing 147 …

Persistence Of Unsafe Practice In Everyday Work: An Exploration Of Organizational And Psychological Factors Constraining Safety In The Operating Room, S. Espin, Lorelei Lingard, G. Baker, G. Regehr

Lorelei Lingard

This paper explores the factors that influence the persistence of unsafe practice in an interprofessional team setting in health care, towards the development of a descriptive theoretical model for analyzing problematic practice routines. Using data collected during a mixed method interview study of 28 members of an operating room team, participants' approaches to unsafe practice were analyzed using the following three theoretical models from organizational and cognitive psychology: Reason's theory of "vulnerable system syndrome", Tucker and Edmondson's concept of first and second order problem solving, and Amalberti's model of practice migration. These three theoretical approaches provide a critical insight into …

'Is That Normal?' Pre-Clerkship Students' Approaches To Professional Dilemmas, Shiphra Ginsburg, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

OBJECTIVES: Context has been recognised as a key variable in studies of medical student professionalism, yet the effect of students' stage of training has not been well explored, despite growing recognition that medical students begin to form their professional ethos from their earliest medical school experiences. The purpose of this study, which builds on previous research involving clinical clerks, was to explore the decision-making processes of pre-clerkship medical students in the face of standardised professional dilemmas.

METHODS: Structured interviews were conducted with 30 pre-clerkship (Years 1 and 2) medical students at one institution. During the interviews, students were asked to …

Credentials As Cultural Capital: The Pursuit Of Higher Degrees Among Academic Medical Trainees, Orlee Guttman, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

BACKGROUND: Growing numbers of postgraduate medical trainees pursue master's or PhD degrees together with professional education. This study explored students' motivation for undertaking these degrees and considered theoretical explanations for the forces shaping this phenomenon.

METHOD: Using constructivist grounded theory methods, interviews were conducted with 14 fellows pursuing higher degrees during subspecialty pediatric training. Emergent themes were identified from transcripts using constant comparative analysis.

RESULTS: Participants pursued higher degrees to be more competitive for academic jobs and to increase their credibility within their field. Academic medicine was felt to demand ever-increasing credentials to position trainees as a good investment. Clinical …

'Slowing Down When You Should': Initiators And Influences Of The Transition From The Routine To The Effortful, Carol-Anne Moulton, Glenn Regehr, Lorelei Lingard, Catherine Merritt, Helen Macrae

Lorelei Lingard

BACKGROUND: 'Slowing down when you should' has been described as marking the transition from 'automatic' to 'effortful' functioning in professional practice. The ability to 'slow down' is hypothesized as an important factor in expert judgment. This study explored the nature of the 'slowing down' phenomenon intraoperatively and its link to surgical judgment.

METHODS: Twenty-eight surgeons across different surgical specialties were interviewed from four hospitals affiliated with a large urban university. In grounded theory tradition, data were collected and analyzed in an iterative design, using a constant comparative approach. Emergent themes were identified and a conceptual framework was developed.

RESULTS: Surgeons …

To Report Or Not To Report: A Descriptive Study Exploring Icu Nurses' Perceptions Of Error And Error Reporting, Sherry Espin, Abigail Wickson-Griffiths, Michelle Wilson, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

OBJECTIVE: To explore the emergent factors influencing nurses' error reporting preferences, scenarios were developed to probe reporting situations in the intensive care unit.

SETTING: Three Canadian intensive care unit settings including: one urban academic tertiary hospital, one community hospital and one academic paediatric hospital. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY/DESIGN: Using qualitative descriptive methodology, semi-structured interviews were guided by a script which included a series of both closed and open-ended questions. One near miss and four error scenarios were used as prompts during the interview. Four of the five scenarios were identical across all the three sites; however, one scenario differed in the community …

Uptake Of A Team Briefing In The Operating Theatre: A Burkean Dramatistic Analysis, Sarah Whyte, Carrie Cartmill, Fauzia Gardezi, Richard Reznick, Beverley Orser, Diane Doran, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

Communication among healthcare professionals is a focus for research and policy interventions designed to improve patient safety, but the challenges of changing interprofessional communication patterns are rarely described. We present an analysis of 756 preoperative briefings conducted by general surgery teams (anesthesiologists, nurses, and surgeons) at four urban Canadian hospitals in the context of two research studies conducted between August 2004 and December 2007. We ask the questions: how and why did briefings succeed, how and why did they fail, and what did they mean for different participants? Ethnographic fieldnotes documenting the coordination and performance of team briefings were analyzed …

Communication Channels In General Internal Medicine: A Description Of Baseline Patterns For Improved Interprofessional Collaboration, Lesley Gotlib Conn, Lorelei Lingard, Scott Reeves, Karen-Lee Miller, Ann Russell, Merrick Zwarenstein

Lorelei Lingard

General internal medicine (GIM) is a communicatively complex specialty because of its diverse patient population and the number and diversity of health care providers working on a medicine ward. Effective interprofessional communication in such information-intensive environments is critical to achieving optimal patient care. Few empirical studies have explored the ways in which health professionals exchange patient information and the implications of their chosen communication forms. In this article, we report on an ethnographic study of health professionals' communication in two GIM wards through the lens of communication genre theory. We categorize and explore communication in GIM into two genre sets-synchronous …

Rules Of Engagement: Residents' Perceptions Of The In-Training Evaluation Process, Christopher Watling, Cynthia Kenyon, Elaine Zibrowski, Valerie Schulz, Mark Goldszmidt, Indu Singh, Heather Maddocks, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

BACKGROUND: In-training evaluation reports (ITERs) often fall short of their goals of promoting resident learning and development. Efforts to address this problem through faculty development and assessment-instrument modification have been disappointing. The authors explored residents' experiences and perceptions of the ITER process to gain insight into why the process succeeds or fails.

METHOD: Using a grounded theory approach, semistructured interviews were conducted with 20 residents. Constant comparative analysis for emergent themes was conducted.

RESULTS: All residents identified aspects of "engagement" in the ITER process as the dominant influence on the success of ITERs. Both external (evaluator-driven, such as evaluator credibility) …

The Rhetoric Of Patient Voice: Reported Talk With Patients In Referral And Consultation Letters, Marlee Spafford, Catherine Schryer, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

Referral and consultation letters are written to enable the exchange of patient information and facilitate the trajectory of patients through the healthcare system. Yet, these letters, written about yet apart from patients, also sustain and constrain professional relationships and influence attitudes towards patients. We analysed 35 optometry referral letters and 35 corresponding ophthalmology consultation letters for reported 'patient voice' coded as 'experience' or 'agenda' and we interviewed 15 letter writers (eight optometry students, six optometrists, and one community ophthalmologist). There were 80 instances of reported 'patient voice' in 35 letters. The majority (68%) of the instances occurred in referral letters, …