Proactive Coaching in General Surgery Internship: Incorporating Well-being Practices into Resident Professional Life.

Coaching can provide learners with space to reflect on their performance while ensuring well-being and encouraging professional achievement and personal satisfaction outside of traditional mentorship and teaching models. We hypothesized that a proactive coaching program for general surgery interns coupled with individualized learning plans would help build foundational skills necessary for residency success and facilitate the incorporation of well-being practices into resident professional life. Here, we present the development, implementation, and outcomes of a novel well-being coaching program for surgical interns. A well-being coaching program was developed and implemented from July 2020 through June 2021 at a single university-based surgical residency program. To assess impact of the coaching program, we designed a mixed-methods study incorporating end-of-program survey results as well as participant narratives from commitment-to-act statements for thematic content. All 32 general surgery interns participated in aspects of the coaching program. The end-of-program survey was completed by 19/32 (59%) interns and commitment-to-act statements were completed by 22/32 (69%). The majority (89%) of survey respondents "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that the longitudinal intern coaching program helped them reach goals they had set for themselves this academic year; 15/19 (79%) noted that the coaching experience was effective in promoting well-being practices in their life. Well-being and professional goals were identified as major themes in the end-of-the-year commitment-to-act statements. Statements specifically mentioned resources highlighted and skills taught in our coaching program such as mindfulness techniques, gratitude journals, and self-compassion strategies. Our study illustrates the effectiveness of a coaching pilot program on promoting well-being practices in a university-based general surgery internship and can be a roadmap with proven efficacy and measurable outcomes.

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Published by Elsevier Inc.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Conflicts of Interest Dr. Fainstad is a certified professional coach and coaches clients outside of her academic role in an independently owned and operated LLC. In that capacity, she does not recruit or coach medical trainees.