Personal Resilience Skills to Improve Surgery Training (PERSIST)

Personal Resilience Skills to Improve Surgery Training (PERSIST)

The objective of the current study (PERSIST) is to 1) determine acceptability of an 8-session (16 week) group curriculum on personal resilience skills for residents in the Duke General Surgery Program, and 2) examine changes in professional fulfillment, depression symptomatology, anxiety symptomatology, and self-valuation, and positive wellbeing (flourishing) at the end of the program and 3-month follow-up compared to baseline, 3) examine performance on surgery training metrics compared to the mean performance of non-participants. Participants will be residents active in the Duke General Surgery Program. There will be one group of Junior Assistant Residents (JAR, N = 10) and one group of Senior Assistant Residents (SAR, N =10), which will be conducted separately. At baseline, all participants will complete questionnaires related personal resilience, including professional fulfillment (professional fulfillment, work exhaustion, interpersonal disengagement), depression symptoms, anxiety, symptoms, self-valuation, flourishing, and psychosocial working conditions. At post-treatment (end of session 8), participants will complete the baseline questionnaires (with the exception of psychosocial working conditions), as well as a questionnaire assessing acceptability of the group experience and content. The post-treatment questionnaires will be repeated as a 3-month follow-up. All study activities are considered low risk, and there the training is expected to have the benefit of teaching lasting skills to promote professional and personal resilience. To protect participant confidentiality, surgery staff and faculty will not have access linkage between study variables and participant identity.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Anxiety Depression; Well-Being, Psychological
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: PERSIST

Detailed Description

The primary aims/objectives are to examine acceptability of the PERSIST intervention, and pre-post changes relevant to resident resilience, as operationalized in measures of personal and professional well-being. The investigators intend to enroll both Junior Assistant Residents (JAR) and Senior Assistant Residents (SAR) cohorts in a combined sample; and secondarily results by group.

The secondary objective is to examine whether participation in PERSIST is associated with better training and safety outcomes compared to resident who do not participate.

Aim 1: Determine acceptability of an 8-session PERSIST intervention for General Surgery residents.

Aim 2: Assess change on measures of personal and professional well-being following an 8 session PERSIST intervention for General Surgery residents. The investigators anticipate that individuals completing PERSIST will show improvement in professional fulfillment, depression symptoms, anxiety symptoms, flourishing, and self-valuation at post-treatment and 3-month follow up compared to baseline.

Aim 3: Compare training and safety outcomes of PERSIST participants compared to non-participants.

PERSIST is adapted from empirically validated treatment of negative affect and low positive emotion. Skills Training 1 includes content across 4 sessions on 1) understanding emotions, 2) present-moment emotional awareness, 3) cognitive flexibility, and 4) countering avoidant and emotion-driven responses. Skills Training 2 includes content across 4 sessions on a) translating values to action, b) lower barriers to action, c) countering avoidance, and d) maintaining actions that support personal resilience. The classes will occur every other Wednesday, resulting in a 16-week intervention period.

The investigators plan to collect multiple sources of information on acceptability. Primarily this will be via questionnaire rating of the experience and value of the 8 content topics in PERSIST. Additionally, the investigators will review and categorize response from open ended content, track participant attendance over the duration of the intervention, and document any feasibility issues related to recruitment, attendance, or dissemination of content. All measures related to well-being assessed at pre-intervention, post-intervention, and 3-month follow up.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 12
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • North Carolina
    • Durham, North Carolina, United States, 27705
      • Duke University Medical Center

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• The pilot cohort will be composed of junior assistant residents (JAR) and senior assistant residents (SAR) members of the Duke General Surgery Residency Program.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Because the PERSIST intervention is focused on coaching resilience to the challenges of clinical training, JAR and SAR who will be completing a research year during the intervention period will be excluded from participation.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Prevention
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm

Intervention / Treatment

Experimental: Assistant Residents; At baseline, all participants will complete questionnaires related personal resilience, including professional fulfillment (professional fulfillment, work exhaustion, interpersonal disengagement), depression symptoms, anxiety, symptoms, self-valuation, flourishing, and psychosocial working conditions. At post-treatment (end of session 8), participants will complete the baseline questionnaires (with the exception of psychosocial working conditions), as well as a questionnaire assessing acceptability of the group experience and content. The post-treatment questionnaires will be repeated as a 3-month follow-up.

Behavioral: PERSIST; PERSIST is adapted from empirically validated treatment of negative affect and low positive emotion. Skills Training 1 includes content across 4 sessions on 1) understanding emotions, 2) present-moment emotional awareness, 3) cognitive flexibility, and 4) countering avoidant and emotion-driven responses. Skills Training 2 includes content across 4 sessions on a) translating values to action, b) lower barriers to action, c) countering avoidance, and d) maintaining actions that support personal resilience. The classes will occur every other Wednesday, resulting in a 16-week intervention period.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Program Acceptability as measured by Questionnaire	A questionnaire rating of the experience and value of the 8 content topics in PERSIST using a scale of 5-50 (higher score = higher acceptability).	Intervention end - 16 weeks
Professional Well-being as measured by the Professional Fulfillment Index (PFI)	Overall professional well-being will be assessed with the Professional Fulfillment Index (PFI), which is scored on a scale of 0-24 (higher score = better outcome).	3 months post-intervention
Personal Well-being as measured by the Self-Valuation (S-V) scale	Personal well-being will be assessed with the Self-Valuation scale (S-V), which is scored on a scale of 0-16 (higher score = better outcome).	3 months post-intervention
Positive well-being as assessed by the Flourishing Scale (FS)	Positive well-being will be assessed by the Flourishing Scale (FS), which is scored on a scale of 8-56 (higher score = better outcome).	3 months post-intervention
Exhaustion as measured by the Professional Fulfillment Index (PFI)	Exhaustion from work will be assessed with the Professional Fulfillment Index (PFI), which is scored on a scale of 0-44 (higher score = worse outcome).	3 months post-intervention
Anxiety symptoms as measured by the General Anxiety Disorder-7 questionnaire (GAD-7)	Anxiety symptoms will be assessed using the General Anxiety Disorder-7 questionnaire (GAD-7), which is scored on a scale from 0-21 (higher = worse outcome).	3 months post-intervention
Depression symptoms as measured by the 8-item version of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-8)	Depression symptoms will be assessed using the 8-item version of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-8), which is scored on a scale from 0-24 (higher = worse outcome).	3 months post-intervention
Program Acceptability as measured by participant attendance in mean percent	Investigators will track participant attendance over the duration of the intervention and report in total mean percent.	Intervention end - 16 weeks

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Clinical and professional competencies measured by milestone achievement in Entrustable Professional Activities (EPA)	Clinical and professional competencies will be assessed by milestone achievement in Entrustable Professional Activities (EPA). EPA scores are core metrics for evaluating resident performance and providing feedback within the General Surgery Program. Surgery training outcomes occur in the normal course of training and are not expressly collected as part of the PERSIST intervention. ABSITE and EPA scores are core metrics for evaluating resident performance and providing feedback within the General Surgery Program.	3 months post-intervention
Safety outcomes as measured by mean number of Safety Reporting System (SRS) incidents	Safety outcomes will be assessed by mean number of Safety Reporting System (SRS) incidents compared to non-participants.	3 months post-intervention

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Duke University
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Elisabeth Tracy, MD, Duke University

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): August 16, 2023
• Primary Completion (Actual): March 31, 2024
• Study Completion (Actual): March 31, 2024

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: November 15, 2023
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 15, 2023
• First Posted (Actual): November 18, 2023

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): April 29, 2024
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 26, 2024
• Last Verified: April 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Personal resilience; Positive Well-being; Professional Fulfillment
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Behavioral Symptoms; Depression
• Other Study ID Numbers: Pro00113779

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No