Pediatric Hospital Medicine Fellows' Perspectives on Autonomy Through Time

Promoting autonomy is at the core of fellowship education. Pediatric hospital medicine (PHM) fellowship programs are relatively new, and many supervising physicians are not trained on how to promote fellow autonomy. Moreover, no studies have explored fellows' perception of autonomy throughout training. To fill this gap, we explored PHM fellows' perceptions of autonomy throughout training.

PHM fellows starting fellowship in July 2021 were recruited to participate in a longitudinal qualitative study. Using self-determination theory as a sensitizing framework, the authors conducted semistructured interviews with 14 fellows throughout fellowship. Incoming data were iteratively analyzed, and codes were created from patterns in the data. Coded data were clustered into themes.

Four themes developed: (1) at the beginning of fellowship, fellows valued direct observation and close supervision from their attending. (2) Initially, fellows felt pressured to make the identical clinical decision as their attending, but over the course of training, they realized their autonomous decisions could coexist with different decisions from their attending physicians. (3) At first, fellows desired attending presence to support and guide their decision making. Over time, fellows desired a coach who could provide valuable formative feedback. (4) Because of the hierarchical nature of medicine, conversations between fellows and attending physicians about autonomy were challenging to initiate.

Fellows' perceptions of autonomy change throughout fellowship, which should be taken into consideration as provisions of autonomy evolve through training. Our findings can inform PHM fellowship curricula and professional development around the promotion of autonomy in fellowship.