Establishing Entrustment of Residents and Autonomy

Abstract

As residents, we constantly strive to independently manage our patients and develop care plans, while the role of the attending faculty varies between complete supervision and control, to allowing complete autonomy. This concept of attending physicians allowing appropriate autonomy so that residents can develop independence in their practice has been termed entrustment. Patients' and instructors' entrustment of responsibility reflects upon one's preparedness to assume professional responsibility after graduation. Over the past several months, we have been reflecting on our experiences working in the emergency department and how different faculty members entrust residents during each shift. Some experiences have been incredible as we develop our styles of practice, while others have been incredibly frustrating and soured the learning environment. As third‐year residents, we studied the factors that allow faculty to foster an appropriate amount of entrustment and conducted discussions with multiple residents on this topic. We have found several themes of how this can be done well and share these ideas with a goal of improving autonomy for emergency medicine residents.