Teach Your Residents to SWIM: A Practical Tool to Promote Resident Scholarly Work in Medicine (SWIM)

Engaging trainees in scholarly work during residency is challenging due to limited time, varying skills, and inconsistent mentorship. Our user-friendly tool, "SWIM", a practical, simplified framework, guides residents to envision, conduct, and complete time-limited, focused scholarly projects. Residents select from five topic categories or "lanes" when starting to "SWIM". Each "SWIM lane" parallels one ACGME core competency: medical knowledge - provider education on best practices; professionalism - curriculum to enhance communication; pPatient Care - patient education addressing health inequities; systems-based practice - interdisciplinary care to address clinical outcomes; andcommunication - shared decision-making for preventative health care. SWIM lanes provide comprehensive project outlines, including suggested metrics assessing knowledge, behavior, motivation to change, and clinical outcomes. Modifiable questionnaires serve as templates to gather pre- and post- intervention data.

Our SWIM tool has been successfully implemented by residents and medical students to develop a wide range of time-limited, achievable, scholarly projects. This framework gives trainees the skills to engage in more elaborate scholarly projects during residency.