Resident Case Tracker

Abstract

Context.— Acquiring objective, timely, and comprehensive feedback on resident diagnostic performance is notoriously difficult. Objective.— To implement a custom software application (Resident Case Tracker) to improve evaluative diagnostic analysis for residency programs. Design.— Residents and faculty use a graphical user interface with restricted access to their own cases and evaluations. For each sign-out, residents enter their diagnoses and comments for each case. Faculty are provided a sign-out queue to review the resident diagnosis and select their level of agreement alongside optional comments. After sign-out, residents can review the agreement level and comments for each case, overall sign-out statistics, and organ-specific performance, and they have the option of opening and reviewing groups of cases by agreement status. A sign-out evaluation is automatically generated and stored alongside additional reports. Administrative access allows privileged users to readily review data analytics at both an individual and residency-wide global level. Results.— A marked increase in completed evaluations and feedback was noted in the initial 36 months of implementation. During a 3-year academic period, faculty completed individual feedback on 33 685 cases and 1073 overall sign-out evaluations. Conclusions.— Resident Case Tracker is an invaluable tool for our residency program and has provided unparalleled feedback and data analytics. Throughout residency, trainees have access to each completed sign-out with the ability to learn from discrepant cases while also monitoring improvements in diagnostic acumen over time. Faculty are able to assess resident milestones much more effectively while more readily identifying residents who would benefit from targeted study.