Objectives: Assess areas of success and opportunities for improvement in a novel medical humanities course for PM&R residents.
Design: A novel medical humanities course for PGY-4 physiatry residents at Mayo Clinic Rochester was designed and implemented during one half-day workshop-style course. The involved residents were excused from patient care duties for the course, and attendance was expected. Lunch was provided, during which the documentary film The Divided Brain was shown. The remainder of the half-day course was spent on sequential group discussions and journaling tasks. Learning objectives included "Differentiate right brain- and left brain-dominated perspectives as they relate to your future practice," "Define suffering in a nuanced way that includes the roles of meaning-making and narrative," and "Apply a neuroscience-informed understanding of compassion." Trainees were only evaluated on attendance. The course was evaluated via feedback from the trainees obtained using the MedHub online evaluation tool.
Results: Anonymous feedback was obtained from all seven participating residents. This feedback was organized into an anonymous Aggregate Evaluation Report by the MedHub tool. For the question, "Please rate the information/relevancy of this course," the following responses were documented: 'Not relevant' (0/7 trainees), 'Somewhat relevant' (2/7 trainees, 28.6%), 'Neutral' (1/7 trainees, 14.3%), 'Beneficial' (4/7 trainees, 57.1%), 'Very Beneficial' (0/7 trainees). For the question, "Do you feel this course should be repeated next year?," 2/7 trainees (28.6%) chose "No" and 5/7 trainees (71.4%) chose "Yes." A variety of written qualitative feedback statements were also documented.
Conclusions: This retrospective assessment of a novel medical humanities course for physiatry residents showed the majority of trainees found the course to be beneficial, and a strong majority recommended repeating the course for future PM&R residents.
