Medical students at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU are receiving unique training that will help them intervene during medical misconduct.
The program is through Heroes Active Bystandership and will empower healthcare professionals and medical students to report misconduct in hospital settings.
Heroes For Healthcare is a new, medical-focused, version of peer intervention training that was launched by Heroes Active Bystandership, created in 2014 to help reduce police misconduct.
Following the death of George Floyd in 2020, they launched a nationwide program teaching police officers how to intervene when they witness misconduct.
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Heroes for Healthcare is taking the peer intervention training into healthcare by collaborating with the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU to create a new nationwide certification program.
The program will train healthcare professionals and medical students to identify and diffuse misconduct and avoid mistakes in healthcare settings to prevent or stop harm, save lives and careers, and promote healthcare professional health and wellness.
"Safety culture is huge in medicine. We build in safety protocols for all different types of things when it comes to technical things like doing surgeries on patients or putting in IV lines or something as simple as assessing how a patient's doing, but these kind of discussions, we don't actually build any safety protocols around but they're really important," said Dr. Amit Singh, director of physician communication at the Burnett School of Medicine.
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In pilot program training, the medical students learned evidence-based ways to intervene and implement solutions that can increase patient safety, reduce mistakes and misconduct and promote wellness.
They participated in group activities that included role-playing based on real-life cases detailing healthcare provider misconduct.
They became some of the first in the United States to be able to receive certified Heroes For Healthcare training, which will officially begin in 2025.
"I really think this training will come to use because we always deal with difficult situations when you're dealing with a life-or-death situation so I'm glad about this training," said third-year medical student Simar Goyal.
