Practicing the Fundamentals of Patient-Centered Care

Excerpt

In recent debates on resident duty hour regulations, attention has been focused primarily on determining the total amount of time residents should spend on patient care and educational activities. But leaders in graduate medical education have long noted the need to fundamentally restructure the content, not just the quantity, of residents’ work days.1‐3In particular, major proposals for graduate medical education redesign have sought to ensure that residents’ workloads and tasks are better aligned with the aim of developing highly skilled, capable, and compassionate physicians. On the ground, however, most changes to residents’ workloads—even those changes that might free up time for focused educational activities, such as the redistribution of various administrative and clinical activities from residents to mid-level practitioners, care managers, and other care team members—have been driven by the need to maintain high volume patient throughput in the face of work hour reforms, rather than reflecting a critical reassessment of what residents should be doing throughout the day to optimize their professional development. …