Impact of a peer-to-peer coaching program on emergency medicine residents: a pre-post intervention study

The inherent stress of change, increased responsibilities, and lack of guidance associated with the transition to residency often result in disillusionment, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization ultimately affecting patient care. A possible solution that has been proposed is to implement coaching programs for residents, especially since such programs have been shown to improve physician well-being, communication, and goal setting. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of peer-to-peer coaching on first-year emergency medicine residents.

A baseline pre-intervention survey was administered to 25 first-year emergency medicine residents, assessing emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, resilience, goal setting, perceived impact of coaching, perceived level of support from their peers and residency program, and self-confidence. The coaches were fourth-year emergency medicine residents, conducting the coaching sessions using the GROW (Goal, Reality, Options, Way forward) model. At the end of the six-month coaching period, the survey was re-administered, and pre- and post-intervention results were compared.

The participants reported more emotional exhaustion (p = 0.062) and depersonalization (p = 0.203) in the post-intervention survey, indicating that coaching possibly did not benefit these domains. No statistically significant change in resilience was measured (p = 0.932). Attitudes toward goal setting may be improved by coaching, though the finding was statistically insignificant (p = 0.089). Responses in the follow-up survey also indicate that perceptions toward the residency program and coaching improved significantly (p = 0.039).

Peer-to-peer coaching may positively impact residents' professional fulfilment, personal development, peer-to-peer communication, patient communication and more. Developing peer-to-peer coaching programs and continually improving them may contribute to healthier, more effective residents, and potentially improve patient care and outcomes.