Letter from the Chief Medical Officer
Dear Colleagues:
Brigham and Women’s Hospital offers us a unique and challenging environment in which to practice medicine. We are constantly striving to improve the safety and quality of our care, and the pervasive nature of this characteristic was noted as unique by the recent Joint Commission surveyors. We hold ourselves accountable to results with continuous self-analysis of patient outcomes, length of stay and other measurables among scores of performance indicators. Our ability to sustain this constant drive for excellence in today’s challenging financial landscape with increasing regulatory and consumer scrutiny is wholly dependent on our ability to maintain a culture of respect, civility and professionalism.
Professionalism in the workplace, quite simply, means carrying ourselves in a manner that creates an environment free from inappropriate, disruptive or abusive conduct. Unprofessional behavior is easy to identify, and for examples we need look no further than well-publicized incidents in the United States Air Force or the multi-million dollar settlements from harassment cases on Wall Street in recent years. And we are not immune from these problems at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
But we’re working hard to do something about it. We have launched a comprehensive professionalism training program to ensure professionalism remains a key component throughout the Brigham environment. All attending physicians with primary appointments at BWH, all primary investigators and all our residents, fellows, post docs and physician assistants are required to complete this two-hour program.
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) now requires residents to complete professionalism training as one of its six critical competencies in postgraduate medical training. The Joint Commission, the Federation of State Medical Boards and other regulatory agencies have endorsed the six core competencies and will begin examining the effectiveness of our professionalism programs, as well.
Since we began this effort, I’m proud to report approximately 70 percent of BWH physicians have completed our professionalism training session, and new professional staff will be required to attend one of these sessions within their first six months at BWH.
Two hours is a modest investment of time to ensure we maintain an environment built on respect where unprofessional behavior will not be tolerated.
Sincerely,
Andy Whittemore, MD
Chief Medical Officer