Converting case conferences to peer learning: Opportunities and barriers

Background

We hypothesized that faculty from a radiology division with weekly case conferences would be interested in adopting a peer learning meeting to grow the practice of peer learning in our department.

Materials and Methods

The Abdominal Division volunteered to pilot peer learning once a month in lieu of the weekly case conferences. A peer learning champion from the division took leadership for this project. An abdominal division faculty survey was completed to gauge interest in peer learning.

Results

The survey had an 81 % response rate: Faculty felt comfortable collecting cases in a database (47 %) and preferred receiving case feedback by chat or email; faculty favored a variety of case types for inclusion in peer learning; faculty slightly preferred having a dedicated peer learning conference leader (35 %) and indicated the submission target for the division faculty should be 1 case per month per faculty (88 %). All faculty indicated the importance of a no-blame culture and most favored anonymous case presentations (70 %). Despite the positive attitudes towards peer learning among the division faculty, the technical piece of the implementation represented a major barrier due to lack of integration into the radiologist workflow and inability to commit time to a faculty member's role as peer learning conference leader.

Conclusions

Our faculty members’ concerns regarding peer learning integration into the daily and monthly divisional workflow needed to be addressed before attempting to implement peer learning. In the context of high clinical imaging volumes, additional efforts, such as accessing case submission tools and time needed to prepare conferences, outweighed the overall perceived value of peer learning in our setting.