Impact of intensive peer coaching on physician performance

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Physician performance in patient experience varies broadly. Physicians who are otherwise excellent clinicians may have lower than average patient experience scores and more frequent patient complaints. This raises the question, how do we assist physicians in improving their skills to provide a better patient experience? To address this problem, a team of physician peer coaches were matched with clinicians who were underperforming to local standards as measured by individual patient experience scores or by number and type of patient complaints. The peer coaches worked with their colleagues for six months, meeting on average every other week to review motivation, skills and performance barriers. Clinicians who were paired with trained peer coaches showed significant, sustained improvement in performance as measured by patient experience scores of the coached cohort. Clinician retention also outperformed manager estimates, and clinicians were highly satisfied with the process. It was concluded that physician performance can be positively impacted through peer coaching in a process that is satisfying to the client, improves estimated retention and reduces turnover costs. Peer coaching benefits patients, clinicians and hospitals by improving the experience of both patients and clinicians and supporting a stable clinician group. Coaching programmes are reproducible and measurable and produce short- and long-term results. Emergent themes recognised by coaches included not only skill development but also professional well-being and personal renewal activities. As clinicians face increased challenges to professional well-being personal and employerbased coaching programmes are one way to mitigate the risk to patients and clinicians.