AEM Education and Training 11: Faculty Assessment of EM Resident Grit

Welcome to the eleventh episode of AEM Education and Training, a podcast collaboration between the Academic Emergency Medicine E&T Journal and Brown Emergency Medicine. Each quarter, we'll give you digital open access to AEM E&T Articles or Articles in Press, with an author interview podcast and links to curated supportive educational materials for EM learners and medical educators.

Find this podcast series on iTunes here.

DISCUSSING (CLICK ON TITLE TO ACCESS):

Faculty Assessment of Emergency Medicine Resident Grit: A Multicenter Study. Nathan Olson, MD, MAEd, Adriana Segura Olson, MD, MAEd, Kelly Williamson, MD, Nicholas Hartman, MD, MPH, Jeremy Branzetti, MD, and Patrick Lank, MD, MS, for the Emergency Medicine Education Research Alliance (EMERA)

And commentary on the article by Annahieta Kalantari, DO, FACEP, FACOEP, FAAEM

LISTEN NOW: INTERVIEW WITH FIRST AUTHOR Nathan Olson, MD, MAEd

Followed by interview with:

commentary author Annahieta Kalantari, DO, FACEP, FACOEP, FAAEM

Nathan Olson, MD, MAEd

Assistant Professor of Medicine

Department of Emergency Medicine

University of Chicago

Annahieta Kalantari, DO, FACEP, FACOEP, FAAEM

Associate Program Director

Emergency Medicine Residency

Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine

Penn State Health

Milton S Hershey Medical Center

Dr. Pensa and Dr. Olsen engage in a discussion of the primary article in the first portion of the podcast. We then interview Commentary author Dr Kalantari.

ABSTRACT:

Background: Assessment of trainees’ competency is challenging; the predictive power of traditional evaluations is debatable especially in regard to non-cognitive traits. New assessments need to be sought to better understand affective areas like personality. Grit, defined as“perseverance and passion for long-term goals,”can assess aspects of personality. Grit predicts educational attainment and burnout rates in other populations and is accurate with an informant report version. Self-assessments, while useful, have inherent limitations. Faculty’s ability to accurately assess trainees’ grit could prove helpful in identifying learner needs and avenues for further development.

Objective:This study sought to determine the correlation between EM resident self-assessed and faculty-assessed Grit Scale (Grit-S) scores of that same resident.

Methods: Subjects were PGY-1 to -4 EM residents and resident-selected faculty as part of a larger multi-center trial involving 10 EM residencies during 2017. The Grit-S Scale was administered to participating EM residents; an Informant version was completed by their self-selected faculty. Correlation coefficients were computed to assess the relationship between residents’ self-assessed and the residents’ faculty-assessed Grit-S score.Results:A total of 281 of 303 residents completed the Grit-S, for a 93% response rate; 200 of 281 residents had at least one faculty-assessed Grit-S score. No correlation was found between residents’ self-assessed and faculty-assessed Grit-S scores. There was a correlation between the two faculty-assessed Grit-S scores for the same resident.

Conclusion: There was no correlation between resident and faculty-assessed Grit-S scores; additionally, faculty-assessed Grit-S scores of residents were higher. This corroborates the challenges faculty face at accurately assessing aspects of residents they supervise. While faculty and resident Grit-S scores did not show significant concordance, grit may still be a useful predictive personality trait that could help shape future training

The Short Grit scale (Grit-S) an objective way to measure resident burnout, and has great potential for identifying residents at risk, despite some limitations.