Enhancing Scholarly Productivity Among Physical Therapy Faculty through Professional Networks

Purpose Let\u27s build a talented workforce of physical therapy educators with diverse ideas who collaborate on projects and discover new knowledge! Faculty are the educational leaders in physical therapy. With growing demands on workload and time, it is essential to attract talent to academia and provide a supportive team to navigate the path toward a successful career. Scholarly productivity accreditation requirements are challenging, especially for new faculty with primary teaching responsibilities or those without an academic doctoral degree. Evidence suggests that network connections can improve faculty performance, innovation and retention. This study arose from concerns in recent years related to the large number of early career faculty joining physical therapy schools across the country. The purpose of this session is to show how effective professional networks for physical therapy faculty aid in success with scholarly activity. This session will apply key principles of the social capital theory to challenge future educational leaders to carefully examine their professional network connections and the role of these connections in their work-related outcomes. Social capital, marked by trust, reciprocity and cooperation can be acquired via professional network connections. One who has an effective network can leverage their social capital to access information and resources, retain support and cohesion, and attain introductions to new professional contacts from brokers within their network. In higher education, there is also evidence that knowing about the value of professional connections can aid in higher performance and varied collaborations - all important for faculty recruitment, development and retention. Methods and/or Description of Project During this session, we will explore the results of a one-year nationwide study of early career physical therapy faculty and the most effective professional network structure and composition. In addition, participants will have an opportunity to compare components of their own professional network against several existing models among physical therapy educators. There is no perfect network model however knowing about how network connections are built and maintained can help individuals leverage their network knowledge for purposeful advancement in their career path. During this session participants will identify individuals who are important sources of work-related information. We will review information about these network contacts such as gender, academic rank, location of work, and discuss connections among the individuals in the network. This information will be used to illustrate networks via network maps that visualize the connections. Participants will learn about certain elements of their network to better understand and characterize their professional network connections. In addition to the size of one\u27s network, we will discuss interconnectedness (density), homophily (similarity to the faculty member), and heterogeneity (diversity of network characteristics), and what these concepts mean for professional network development. Results/Outcomes Network composition results from over 50 early career PT faculty from 39 different institutions across the country will be shared. We assessed network size and density (connectedness) and six measures of homophily ( characteristics similar to the early career faculty member) and 18 measures of heterogeneity ( diversity). We used univariate analysis and multiple logistic regression to explore how the baseline network structure and composition predicted scholarly activity one year later. The results from this study demonstrated that a more open, less interconnected network was associated with greater quantity and higher-quality scholarly activity, even after controlling for the duration as a faculty member and achievement of an academic doctoral degree. Conclusions/Relevance to the conference theme Key take-aways related to faculty development from this session include: 1) some early career faculty are productively using their network connections, despite the Carnegie Classification of their institution, duration in their faculty job, and earning an academic doctoral degree; 2) the structure of a most effective professional network for scholarly activity is open with low connectedness among contacts; and 3) mentors can guide early career faculty to systematically and strategically modify their network to be more effective and support their scholarly agendas

Teams in Small Organizations: Conceptual, Methodological, and Practical Considerations

Research on teams and teamwork has flourished in the last few decades. Much of what we know about teams and teamwork comes from research using short-term student teams in the lab, teams in larger organizations, and, more recently, teams in rather unique and extreme environments. The context in which teams operate influences team composition, processes, and effectiveness. Small organizations are an understudied and often overlooked context that presents a rich opportunity to augment our understanding of teams and team dynamics. In this paper, we discuss how teams and multi-team systems in small organizations may differ from those found in larger organizations. Many of these differences present both methodological and practical challenges to studying team composition and processes in small complex organizational settings. We advocate for applying and accepting new and less widely used methodological approaches to advance our understanding of the science of teams and teamwork in such contexts

Good Catch! Using Interdisciplinary Teams and Team Reflexivity to Improve Patient Safety

Interdisciplinary teams play an important role implementing innovations that facilitate the quality and safety of patient care. This article examined the role of reflexivity in team innovation implementation and its association with an objective patient safety outcome, inpatient fall rates (a fall is an unintended downward displacement of a patient’s body to the ground or other object). In this study, we implemented, supported, and evaluated interdisciplinary teams intended to decrease fall risk in 16 small rural hospitals. These hospitals were part of a collaborative that sought to increase knowledge and facilitate reflexivity about fall event reporting and fall risk reduction structures and processes. We assessed team reflexivity at the start and at the end of the 2-year intervention and innovation implementation at the end of the intervention. The 16 hospitals reported objective fall event data and patient days throughout the project, which we used to calculate comparative rates for assisted, unassisted, and injurious falls. The results suggest that teams benefited from the intervention, increasing reflexivity from the start of the project to the end, which was related to innovation implementation and decreases in fall rates. Theoretical and practical applications of the results are discussed

Group and Organizational Safety Norms Set the Stage for Good Post-Fall Huddles

We explored group and organizational safety norms as antecedents to meeting leader behaviors and achievement of desired outcomes in a special after-action review case—a post-fall huddle. A longitudinal survey design was used to investigate the relationship between organizational/group safety norms, huddle leader behavior, and huddle meeting effectiveness. The sample included health care workers in critical access hospitals (N = 206) who completed a baseline safety norm assessment and an assessment of post-fall huddle experiences 3 to 6 months later. Findings indicate that organizational and group safety norms relate to perceived huddle meeting effectiveness through appropriate huddle leader behavior in a partial mediated framework. In contrast to previous research showing after-action reviews predicting group and organizational safety norms, the longitudinal study presented here suggests that group and organizational safety norms set the stage for the enactment of post-fall huddles in an effective manner

Are We Really Listening? A Program to Assess and Mitigate Systemic Factors Contributing to Clinician Burnout

Background: Many US physicians are experiencing burnout affecting patient care quality, safety, and experience. Institutions often focus on personal resilience instead of system-level issues. Our leaders developed a novel process to identify and prioritize key system-related stressors and work to mitigate factors that negatively impact clinician wellbeing through a structured Listening Campaign. Methods: The Listening Campaign consists of meeting with each clinician group leader, a group Listening Session, a follow up meeting with the leader, a final report, and a follow-up session. During the Listening Session, clinicians engage in open discussion about what is going well, complete individual reflection worksheets and identify one “wish” to improve their professional satisfaction. Participants rate these wishes to assist with prioritization. Results: As of January 2020, over 200 clinicians participated in 20 listening sessions. One-hundred twenty-two participants completed a survey; 80% stated they benefited from participation and 83% would recommend it to others. Conclusion: Collecting feedback from clinicians on their experience provides guidance for leaders in prioritizing initiatives and opportunities to connect clinicians to organizational resources. A Listening Campaign is a tool recommended for healthcare systems to elicit clinician perspectives and communicate efforts to address systemic factors

The impact of post-fall huddles on repeat fall rates and perceptions of safety culture: a quasi-experimental evaluation of a patient safety demonstration project

Background: Conducting post-fall huddles is considered an integral component of a fall-risk-reduction program. However, there is no evidence linking post-fall huddles to patient outcomes or perceptions of teamwork and safety culture. The purpose of this study is to determine associations between conducting post-fall huddles and repeat fall rates and between post-fall huddle participation and perceptions of teamwork and safety culture. Methods: During a two-year demonstration project, we developed a system for 16 small rural hospitals to report, benchmark, and learn from fall events, and we trained them to conduct post-fall huddles. To calculate a hospital’s repeat fall rate, we divided the total number of falls reported by the hospital by the number of unique medical record numbers associated with each fall. We used Spearman correlations with exact P values to determine the association between the proportion of falls followed by a huddle and the repeat fall rate. At study end, we used the TeamSTEPPS® Teamwork Perceptions Questionnaire (T-TPQ) to assess perceptions of teamwork support for fall-risk reduction and the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPS) to assess perceptions of safety culture. We added an item to the T-TPQ for respondents to indicate the number of post-fall huddles in which they had participated. We used a binary logistic regression with a logit link to examine the effect of participation in post-fall huddles on respondent-level percent positive T-TPQ and HSOPS scores. We accounted for clustering of respondents within hospitals with random effects using the GLIMMIX procedure in SAS/STAT. Result: Repeat fall rates were negatively associated with the proportion of falls followed by a huddle. As compared to hospital staff who did not participate in huddles, those who participated in huddles had more positive perceptions of four domains of safety culture and how team structure, team leadership, and situation monitoring supported fall-risk reduction. Conclusions: Post-fall huddles may reduce the risk of repeat falls. Staff who participate in post-fall huddles are likely to have positive perceptions of teamwork support for fall-risk reduction and safety culture because huddles are a team-based approach to reporting, adapting, and learnin

Evaluating the use of multiteam systems to manage the complexity of inpatient falls in rural hospitals

Objective To evaluate the implementation and outcomes of evidence-based fall-risk-reduction processes when those processes are implemented using a multiteam system (MTS) structure. Data Sources/Study Setting Fall-risk-reduction process and outcome measures from 16 small rural hospitals participating in a research demonstration and dissemination study from August 2012 to July 2014. Previously, these hospitals lacked a fall-event reporting system to drive improvement. Study Design A one-group pretest-posttest embedded in a participatory research framework. We required hospitals to implement MTSs, which we supported by conducting education, developing an online toolkit, and establishing a fall-event reporting system. Data Collection Hospitals used gap analyses to assess the presence of fall-risk-reduction processes at study beginning and their frequency and effectiveness at study end; they reported fall-event data throughout the study. Principal Findings The extent to which hospitals implemented 21 processes to coordinate the fall-risk-reduction program and trained staff specifically about the program predicted unassisted and injurious fall rates during the end-of-study period (January 2014-July 2014). Bedside fall-risk-reduction processes were not significant predictors of these outcomes. Conclusions Multiteam systems that effectively coordinate fall-risk-reduction processes may improve the capacity of hospitals to manage the complex patient, environmental, and system factors that result in falls

Thrive: Success Strategies for the Modern-Day Faculty Member

The THRIVE collection is intended to help faculty thrive in their roles as educators, scholars, researchers, and clinicians. Each section contains a variety of thought-provoking topics that are designed to be easily digested, guide personal reflection, and put into action. Please use the THRIVE collection to help: Individuals study topics on their own, whenever and wherever they want Peer-mentoring or other learning communities study topics in small groups Leaders and planners strategically insert faculty development into existing meetings Faculty identify campus experts for additional learning, grand rounds, etc. If you have questions or want additional information on a topic, simply contact the article author or email [email protected]://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/facdev_books/1000/thumbnail.jp

Creative Idea Evaluation and Selection: Effects of Process Structure and Individual Differences

Creativity is the most influential factor in gaining a competitive business advantage in today’s economy. Between the processes of brainstorming and actual solution implementation is the critical but overlooked process of evaluating ideas and selecting of solutions to solve problems. We explored how the type of information and structure provided in the evaluation and selection process and participant personality characteristics affected idea evaluation accuracy and the selection of creative solutions to solve a problem. 186 participants read a realistic ill-defined story problem, evaluated the quality and originality of 15 solutions to the problem with a detailed rubric, simple definition, or no information about quality and originality, selected one solution to solve the problem with a structured step-by-step or open selection process, and completed several personality measures. Participants who evaluated solutions with the rubric demonstrated the most solution quality and originality evaluation accuracy. Additionally, those who more accurately evaluated solution quality and originality were more likely to select a truly creative solution to solve the problem. Furthermore, participants’ need for closure and perceptions that they were “too busy for new ideas” hindered while creative self-efficacy bolstered solution quality and originality evaluation accuracy. Finally, participants high in need for closure and perceptions that they were “too busy for new ideas” were more likely to select non-optimal or high-quality only solutions to solve the problem, while participants higher in openness to experience and creative self-efficacy were more likely to select original or truly creative solutions to solve the problem

Innovations in Rural Health Care: “CAPTURE”ing the Challenges and Successes of Implementing Interprofessional Fall Risk Reduction Programs in Nebraska’s Critical Access Hospitals

Patient falls are a common, costly, and serious adverse event in all hospitals. Compared to larger urban hospitals, smaller and more rural Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) tend to serve higher proportions of older adults at risk for falls and have higher fall injury rates. Yet, CAHs lack many of the incentives and resources present in larger hospitals to adequately attend to falls as a patient safety risk. To address this patient safety risk, we partnered with 17 of Nebraska’s CAHs to implement an innovative patient safety program called Collaborative and Proactive Teamwork Used to Reduce (CAPTURE) Falls. The CAPTURE Falls program moves beyond the traditional paradigm of fall prevention by establishing collaborative interprofessional fall risk reduction teams who coordinate fall prevention processes and assume accountability for the hospital’s fall risk reduction program and outcomes. Through the CAPTURE Falls program, CAHs are working to establish a culture of safety and collaborative teamwork, and to utilize action planning and sensemaking to overcome barriers and implement evidence based practices to support fall risk reduction. We will share the challenges and successes faced by CAHs in implementing sustainable patient safety programs and provide a model for addressing the unique challenges in implementing innovations in small rural hospitals