Implementation of dedicated social worker coaching for emergency medicine residents - Lessons learned

• Published in: Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians Open Vol. 4; no. 3; pp. e12971 - n/a
• Main Authors: Buchanan, Jennie A, Meadows, Sarah, Whitehead, Jason, Sungar, W Gannon, Angerhofer, Christy, Nussbaum, Abraham, Blok, Barbara, Guth, Todd, Bakes, Katherine, Millner, Malorie, Salazar, Lavonne, Stephens, Megan, Kaplan, Bonnie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01-06-2023; John Wiley and Sons Inc; Wiley
• Subjects: Burnout; Clinical Concepts; Coaching; Confidentiality; Counseling; COVID-19; Education; Emergency medical care; Initiatives; Intervention; Medicine; Meetings; Mental health; Pandemics; Professionals; Social workers
• ISSN: 2688-1152; 2688-1152
• DOI: 10.1002/emp2.12971

Emergency medicine training is associated with high levels of stress and burnout, which were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic further exposed a mismatch between trainees' mental health needs and timely support services; therefore, the objective of our innovation was to create an opportunity for residents to access a social worker who could provide consistent coaching. The residency leadership team partnered with our graduate medical education (GME) office to identify a clinical social worker and professionally-trained coach to lead sessions. The project was budgeted at an initial cost of $15,000 over 1 year. Residents participated in 49 group and 73 individual sessions. Post implementation in 2021, we compared this intervention to all other wellness initiatives. Resident response rate was 80.88% (
 = 55/68) and median interquartile range (IQR) score of the initiative was 2 (1 = detrimental and 4 = beneficial) versus 3.79 (3.69-3.88) the median IQR of all wellness initiatives. A notable number, 22%, rated the program as detrimental, which could be related to summary comments regarding ability to attend sessions, lack of session structure, loss of personal/educational time, and capacity of the social worker to relate with them. Summary comments also revealed the innovation was useful, with individual sessions preferred to group sessions. Application of a social worker coaching program in an emergency medicine residency program appears to be a feasible novel intervention. Lessons learned after implementation include the importance of recruiting someone with emergency department/GME experience, orienting them to culture before implementation and framing coaching as an integrated residency resource.