Development and preliminary evaluation of the resident coordinated-transitional care (RC-TraC) program: A sustainable option for transitional care education

ABSTRACT

Older adults often face poor outcomes when transitioning from hospital to home. Although physicians play a key role in overseeing transitions, there is a lack of practice-based educational programs that prepare resident physicians to manage care transitions of older adults. An educational intervention to provide residents with real-life transitional care practice was therefore developed—Resident-coordinated Transitional Care (RC-TraC). RC-TraC adapted the evidence-based Coordinated-Transitional Care (C-TraC) nurse role for residents, providing opportunities to follow patients during the peri-hospital period without additional costs to the residency program. Between July 2010 and June 2013, 31 internal medicine residents participated in RC-TraC, caring for 721 patients. RC-TraC has been a sustainable, low-cost, practice-based education experience that is recognized as transitional care education by residents and continues in operation to this day. RC-TraC is a promising option for geriatric-based transitional care education of resident physicians and could also be adapted for nonphysician learners.

KEYWORDS:

• Active learning
• clinical training
• graduate medical education
• physician education
• program evaluation

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Michael Peregrim, MD, Laury L. Jensen, BSN, RN, Holly Isenhower Bottoms, MD, PharmD, and Mary K. Thompson, PhD for their contributions to the study concept and design. Also, thanks to Emily Schmitz, Michael Gehring, and Jacquelyn Mirr for their assistance with formatting the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by a VA Transformation-21 Grant (Patient-Centric Alternatives to Institutional Extended Care, PI: Kind) and the Madison VA Geriatrics Research, Education and Clinical Center (GRECC-Manuscript #2016-XX). Dr. Kind is also supported by a National Institute on Aging Beeson Career Development Award (K23AG034551 [PI: Kind], National Institute on Aging, The American Federation for Aging Research, The John A. Hartford Foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies and The Starr Foundation). Additional support was provided by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health’s Department of Medicine, and the Community-Academic Partnerships core of the University of Wisconsin Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (UW ICTR), grant 1UL1RR025011 from the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program of the National Center for Research Resources, National Institutes of Health. No funding source had a role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript, and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a VA Transformation-21 Grant (Patient-Centric Alternatives to Institutional Extended Care, PI: Kind) and the Madison VA Geriatrics Research, Education and Clinical Center (GRECC-Manuscript #2016-XX). Dr. Kind is also supported by a National Institute on Aging Beeson Career Development Award (K23AG034551 [PI: Kind], National Institute on Aging, The American Federation for Aging Research, The John A. Hartford Foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies and The Starr Foundation). Additional support was provided by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health’s Department of Medicine, and the Community-Academic Partnerships core of the University of Wisconsin Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (UW ICTR), grant 1UL1RR025011 from the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program of the National Center for Research Resources, National Institutes of Health. No funding source had a role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript, and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.