Three teams at Johns Hopkins are among the 33 winning projects of nearly 200 national contenders in developing strategies for better connecting with patients, and improving physician and patient well-being. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education will provide funding for each project starting July of this year.

“We are so pleased that three of our resident and clinical/fellow teams were awarded these Back to Bedside grants,” says Jessica Bienstock, M.D., M.P.H., associate dean for graduate medical education and professor of gynecology and obstetrics. “The projects chosen are truly innovative and improve meaning that our physicians in training find in our clinical learning environments. We are excited for our trainees to make an impact and change how medicine is practiced.”

The three projects and their teams are:

• Compassion Rounds, led by Camilla Yu, Sandy Truong and Yangshu (Linda) Pan with mentorship from Jessica Bienstock

In weekly, resident-led, multidisciplinary “Compassion Rounds” two gynecology and obstetrics residents, the bedside nurse, a social worker and a chaplain will meet for 20–30 minutes with women hospitalized due to high-risk pregnancies. Using a facilitated discussion guide, the team will discuss the patient’s psychosocial experience of care and her emotional and spiritual health with the aim of creating a sense of unity and trust between the patient and the team caring for her. The project will at the same time foster the ability of residents to know and connect with their patients more deeply as people. 

• The GIMboree Experience: Enhancing Joy in Outpatient Medicine, led by Deborah Freeland with mentorship from Paul O’Rourke

The GIMboree Experience will build a community of residents interested in primary care careers. The project will invite patients to share their health care experiences during an ongoing series of discussions with internal medicine and MedPeds residents interested in primary care. Residents will also have time during the monthly meetings to reflect on specific clinical experiences they have had and hear from faculty role models about their career paths in outpatient medicine.

• INFORM: INvolving patients in Fellow education and cOntRibutions to academic Medicine, led by Anum Minhas, Daniel Ambinder, Nino Isakadze and Pranoti Hiremath with mentorship from Steven Schulman.

INFORM will foster meaningful patient-clinician bedside interactions by involving patients directly in weekly fellow-faculty case conferences. Patients will be asked to share their perspective to allow fellows to provide more patient-centered care and to acknowledge the tremendous educational contribution that patients provide, in the hope that this reduces fellows’ burnout.

On the Web:

• Gynecology and Obstetrics Residency Program

• Johns Hopkins Bayview Internal Medicine Residency Program

• Pediatric Residency Program