Background: Translating academic effort into scholarship and portfolios for institutional awards and promotion is time intensive and can be challenging to incorporate into the daily work of academic hospitalists. Writing accountability groups offer an opportunity to increase scholarly productivity and receive peer support.
Purpose: The goal of the VA Hospitalist Writing Accountability Group is to increase the completion of scholarly products and portfolios for institutional awards and promotion among hospitalists at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center. For the pilot, we focused on establishing the feasibility and acceptability of the Writing Accountability Group. The VA Hospitalist Writing Accountability Group utilizes the community of practice theoretical framework by bringing together faculty with a shared knowledge base, values, and interest in developing as hospital medicine faulty.
Description: Ten self-selected VA hospitalists met weekly on Microsoft Teams. All participants are Assistant Professors and have been at their current academic rank for a median of 6 years. Four participants have completed portfolios for institutional awards for teaching or patient care. Two hospitalists are clinician-investigators, and eight hospitalists are clinician-educators. Each Writing Accountability Group was scheduled for 60 minutes using a Teams calendar invite. For the first 10 minutes, attendees discussed what they worked on in the past week and set a goal for what they will work on during the meeting. Attendees then muted their microphones and worked independently for 30 minutes on a scholarly-related activity of their choice. The meeting ended with attendees sharing what they accomplished during the writing period, setting a goal for the next week, and having open discussion. One person was designated for each meeting to track the attendance and goals. Attendees shared resources, such as completed portfolios for institutional awards, through a Teams channel.We have completed 10 Writing Accountability Group meetings. Attendance has ranged from 2-8 (median 5) hospitalists per meeting. Attendees have worked on manuscripts for publication, grant applications, portfolios for institutional teaching and patient care awards, academic presentations, curricula vitae, fellowship applications for the Society of Hospital Medicine, assignments for a master’s program, and writing related to research and quality improvement projects. Benefits of the writing accountability group reported by attendees include having time blocked on their calendar for writing, being able to hear what peers are working on, creating a mechanism for peer pressure, receiving peer support, and setting personal goals for writing. Most attendees (70%) wanted the writing time extended to more than 30 minutes. All attendees will continue participating in the Writing Accountability Group in the next iteration.
Conclusions: The pilot Writing Accountability Group was feasible and acceptable for academic hospitalists. Attendees valued the opportunity to have dedicated time to work on scholarly activities with their peers. By including hospitalists who work at a single clinical site, attendees have similar experiences and understand the academic and clinical context of the VA and the academic affiliate. In the next iteration, we will increase the writing time to 40 minutes and track attendees’ short-term and long-term writing outcomes.