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Imbuing Medical Professionalism (IMP)

The project aims to raise awareness of and ultimately imbue medical professionalism in the culture of the hospital by targeting interns and senior medical and nursing staff through an embedded learning and action research model. Learning in Action is central to the one year Intern Programme and one of the eight domains of this programme is Medical Professionalism. However putting this learning into practice in the hospital setting can be a challenge because the culture may not fully support doctors to raise concerns and the expectation is that even if they do so, there may be a poor or inadequate response. A recent study by the Medical Council (2014) found that amongst the top reasons for not reporting a colleague were a belief that the report would not result in any action (44%) and fear of retribution (25%). This project proposes to engage key stakeholders (interns, medical students, senior doctors and nurses, patients and other health professionals) in the development of a game (based on PlayDecide methodology, www.Playdecide.eu) that aims to raise awareness of medical professionalism as well as debating the dilemmas and concerns interns face in raising concerns about poor professional practice amongst colleagues. This game will serve as the basis for an embedded learning experiment with interns in two hospitals (one where an open disclosure policy has already been piloted). The impact of the game and workshops with senior medical and nursing will be assessed through a cohort study of interns measuring their reporting of concerns, errors and incidents and the hospital’s response to these. Measures will be taken for 6 months from January-June 2015. Intervention will take place from July-December 2015 with measurement. Following the completion of the 6 month intervention period measurements will continue for a further 6 months from January-June 2016.