The Struggle Is Real: Strategies for Clinician Educators to Help Struggling Learners

Every clinician-educator has the opportunity and responsibility to help struggling learners improve across the medical education continuum. Struggling learners are defined as trainees who fail to "meet the expectations of a training program," i.e. experience deficiencies tied to LCME and ACGME competencies. The ability to remediate learners who struggle is imperative given the personal and clinical consequences of ongoing educational and professionalism deficiencies. Many educators struggle to remediate struggling learners due to lack of time, skills, and best practices for remediation. While best practices have focused on formal remediation processes (i.e. individual development plans and escalation of remediation needs), this workshop focuses on giving clinician-educators a practical and systematic approach to addressing learner difficulties in real time that includes forming a competency-based differential diagnosis and aligned behavioral strategies. Presenters will use the SOAP (subjective, objective, assessment, and plan) framework to leverage clinician-educator clinical and educational skills. A blend of small and large group activities including role play and think-pair-share will help apply these skills to a simulated case in GME and give time for participants to reflect on a struggling learner in their own educational practice. As the discipline moves toward a unified system of competency-based medical education, faculty will need to employ the skills presented in this workshop to help learners succeed on an individual and institutional level.