American Medical Association (04/24/24) Garvey, Georgia

Redesigning mandatory training modules — which many physicians complete during off-hours and on weekends — to increase their efficiency and usefulness could have an impact on physician burnout. Speaking at the American Conference on Physician Health, Nicole Goldhaber, MD, a surgical resident at University of California, San Diego Health, noted that physicians often participate in the training after hours or on the weekend. "We found that off-hours completion of mandatory modules is common in our study population, suggesting that this exists as a substantial burden of this uncompensated effort on our physicians," said Goldhaber. She said that physicians working at multiple institutions often will have to undergo annual compliance training for each one, even though the information is largely the same. It would take nearly five hours to complete all six mandatory training modules in Goldhaber's health system, she said. In an effort to make the process more efficient, Goldhaber and her colleagues convened a multidisciplinary group that incorporated physicians, quality improvement employees and owners of the modules. "Over time," she said, "the group identified several opportunities to reduce the burden of an annual mandatory training while adhering to regulatory and compliance requirements." Among the changes they made were making one module voluntary or needed only on a case-by-case basis, narrowing the content to focus on the key information, extending the timeline for completion to 60 days, developing an app that enabled physicians to complete the training on their mobile devices and shifting the module deadlines to May. "The high proportion of our off-hours module stats in this analysis suggest that this may be a modifiable factor to mitigate physician burnout," Goldhaber said. She also said that "healthcare organizations should prioritize physician wellness alongside regulatory compliance and educational needs in any mandatory online training initiatives moving forward." The AMA House of Delegates adopted policy in June to "encourage reciprocity for corporate compliance curricula between institutions to minimize duplicate training and assessment of physicians."

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