Advisor Program Guidelines

Faculty advisors are assigned to residents at the beginning of PGY-1 year and advisor meetings will take place at least twice a year throughout residency. The advisor will serve as a point of contact to monitor resident wellness, help resident identify career goals and scholarly activity opportunities, and help ensure that the resident is meeting expected clinical performance standards.

Meetings

  • Residents and advisors share responsibility for making sure that the meetings occur.

    Residents should reach out to faculty advisors or their administrative assistants to schedule meetings.

    • Meeting #1 July-September

    • Meeting #2 January-March

    • Meet PRN throughout the year

  • Post-meeting documentation: Advisors complete the post-meeting advisor report, which will ask about the above components of the meeting. Report is through Qualtrics.

  • Meeting discussion to include:

    • PGY-1: Check in to support resident wellbeing and answer any questions the resident has about future neurology training.

    • PGY-2 through PGY-4: There is a more structured agenda for meetings, including:

      • Career goals

      • Feedback on documentation

      • Resident well-being

      • Scholarly activity (See also Resident Research Program Syllabus for further details)

        1) The Advisor must ensure that the resident is on schedule for completion of a project based on their PGY year and provide guidance to help the resident past any obstacles to scholarly activity they may be encountering. The Advisor should also help facilitate resident contact with an appropriate Research Mentor.

        2) Timeline for resident research projects:

        PGY-2: Identify focus area and make contact with research mentor

        PGY-3: Plan for the scholarly project in place, and any IRB, funding, data collection tools, etc. finalized.

        PGY-4: Data collection, analysis, and abstract / manuscript preparation.

      • Any other questions or concerns

Pre-meeting Documentation Review

  • Review the Documentation Guidelines section of the Guidelines for Neurology Inpatient Attendings

  • The resident will provide the Advisor with names/MRNs of some patients they have taken care of over the prior month, both inpatients and outpatients.

    • Advisors will log into EPIC and review documentation. The functionality that reveals the origin of text (e.g. Copied from another note, inserted from template, etc.) should be utilized.

  • Advisors are also encouraged to randomly to sample the overall quality of the resident’s daily work. Resident schedules can be viewed at AMiON.com (login: umneuro).

    • During a resident’s inpatient rotations, advisors can review the service list in EPIC and review notes from the resident’s cohort of patients.

    • For outpatient notes, advisors can utilize the Schedule tab in EPIC to identify patients seen by the resident in clinic.

Observed Patient Evaluations

The goal of observed patient exams is to allow residents to get individualized direct feedback on their neurologic history and exam skills early in their training to ensure competence and to optimize their skills.

  • At least twice during PGY-2 year, residents should be observed by their advisor performing a complete history and physical exam.

  • At least one patient must be an ambulatory outpatient.

    • Residents should coordinate with their advisor to see patients during the advisor’s clinic session.

      • As this should only take about 1 hour, it can be scheduled during various resident rotations, as long as it is not during a crucial time for patient care (e.g. not during morning rounds when on the inpatient service).

    • If resident’s advisor does not have an outpatient practice, resident can arrange to perform evaluation with Dr. Cronin or Dr. Crino instead.

  • Resident performance will be evaluated using the ABPN criteria for Clinical Skills Evaluations through the MedHub Evaluations – “Clinical Skills Evaluation”).

    • Standard for acceptable performance = that of a competent practicing neurologist in Interviewing skills and Neurologic Examination Skills.

      • Presentation and Formulation are also evaluated for the purposes of feedback, but performance at the level of a practicing neurologist is not required at this stage to meet the acceptable performance standard.

    • See Guidelines for the ABPN Clinical Skills Evaluations for more details

  • Evaluations must be repeated throughout PGY-2 year until resident has achieved acceptable performance on at least one patient encounter.

Mentors

  • Identified by the residents as they develop a subspecialty interest or scholarly projects.

  • As residents get to know more attendings and identify areas of clinical and research interest, the advising/mentoring team will expand, but meetings with the initial advisor will continue.

  • Research Mentor: Faculty member who will guide the resident through completion of their scholarly activity. See Resident Research Program Syllabus for further details on the research mentor’s roles and responsibilities.

Program Director

  • Meet with each resident individually twice a year and as needed.

  • Monthly meetings with all residents as a group

Last Updated: November 19, 2024