Financial Leadership Skills Training: Can a Hybrid Didactic/Interactive Exercise Model Fill a Gap in Graduate Medical Education?

Abstract

Background With recent healthcare changes, competition for financial resources is increasing. Graduate medical education (GME) programs do not routinely prepare residents to understand the complexity of financial decisions that affect their practice. At our institution, we designed new sessions to explore personal and departmental financial education in our yearly Radiation Oncology (RO) leadership course. Methods Over the past five years, we have been piloting a longitudinal leadership course for our RO medical and physics residents, integrating a hybrid didactic/interactive exercise approach. The core RO faculty consists of the course director, the residency directors, and department leadership. The course structure includes an introduction to understanding how resource allocation is determined at the institutional level as well as a personal finance component. We recruited the RO Vice Chair, RO Department Administrator, and the MD, MBA Chair of the Vacancy Review Committee at our institution to teach these concepts over three sessions. The first was a didactic introduction to departmental finance by our Vice Chair to prepare attendees for the second interactive session, in which residents worked through a pro forma to determine the feasibility of hiring a new departmental faculty member. The final session was led by our MD, MBA colleague who taught residents how hiring decisions are made and explained what happens to the pro forma at the institutional level. The third session integrated an interactive exercise focusing on personal finance skills. Results At the end of the series, the ten resident attendees were informally surveyed regarding how effective and worthwhile the three finance sessions were. The verbal feedback regarding the curriculum was uniformly positive. All ten residents, including the physics resident, indicated that these classes were helpful and filled a gap in the current GME curriculum. Further feedback analysis noted that additional interactive exercises should be prioritized to reinforce understanding of these financial concepts. Discussion Financial education is lacking in most GME training programs. Targeted instruction for both personal and departmental financial decisions was well received in this novel course at our institution. Further studies are needed to determine effectiveness and optimal integration of financial leadership skill development in the GME setting. Future directions could be to determine the best balance of didactic instruction and interactive exercises to enhance resident understanding of these financial topics. With recent healthcare changes, competition for financial resources is increasing. Graduate medical education (GME) programs do not routinely prepare residents to understand the complexity of financial decisions that affect their practice. At our institution, we designed new sessions to explore personal and departmental financial education in our yearly Radiation Oncology (RO) leadership course. Over the past five years, we have been piloting a longitudinal leadership course for our RO medical and physics residents, integrating a hybrid didactic/interactive exercise approach. The core RO faculty consists of the course director, the residency directors, and department leadership. The course structure includes an introduction to understanding how resource allocation is determined at the institutional level as well as a personal finance component. We recruited the RO Vice Chair, RO Department Administrator, and the MD, MBA Chair of the Vacancy Review Committee at our institution to teach these concepts over three sessions. The first was a didactic introduction to departmental finance by our Vice Chair to prepare attendees for the second interactive session, in which residents worked through a pro forma to determine the feasibility of hiring a new departmental faculty member. The final session was led by our MD, MBA colleague who taught residents how hiring decisions are made and explained what happens to the pro forma at the institutional level. The third session integrated an interactive exercise focusing on personal finance skills. At the end of the series, the ten resident attendees were informally surveyed regarding how effective and worthwhile the three finance sessions were. The verbal feedback regarding the curriculum was uniformly positive. All ten residents, including the physics resident, indicated that these classes were helpful and filled a gap in the current GME curriculum. Further feedback analysis noted that additional interactive exercises should be prioritized to reinforce understanding of these financial concepts. Financial education is lacking in most GME training programs. Targeted instruction for both personal and departmental financial decisions was well received in this novel course at our institution. Further studies are needed to determine effectiveness and optimal integration of financial leadership skill development in the GME setting. Future directions could be to determine the best balance of didactic instruction and interactive exercises to enhance resident understanding of these financial topics.