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The arrival of Generation Z, the next generation of medical learners, has been accompanied by efforts to adapt teaching practices for this new group of students. Many have identified challenges associated with addressing the needs of modern medical learners. One particular trend we have observed is that medical students are increasingly requesting an "answer key" for all aspects of their medical education. Students often expect to have the correct answers readily available to them to ensure they have reached the correct conclusion and to determine the precise knowledge they need to master. Yet, for much of medicine, and particularly in the care of critically ill patients with multisystem disease in intensive care units, answers are uncertain, and the body of knowledge is ever-growing. Students' regular requests for solutions to be provided to them threaten to undermine their development into critically thinking, self-sufficient physicians. We outline three potential contributors to this multifactorial problem and offer corresponding pedagogical solutions. Specifically, we address how prioritizing outcomes over process, discomfort with uncertainty, and fear of faltering can cause students to seek excessive levels of support that may ultimately do more harm than good. Addressing students' concerns in these three key areas will not only serve students well during their undergraduate medical training but will also equip them with the skills needed to succeed in the clinical realm. To produce physicians capable of navigating an increasingly uncertain world, medical educators will need to help students appreciate that finding the answer is more complex than being provided an answer key.

As medicine continues to advance with improvements in technology, factual information has become more easily available at the bedside. Nevertheless, diagnostic error remains a salient concern for the medical community and public. To address this problem, two fundamental characteristics of the physician remain important: curiosity and the ability to apply critical reasoning to solve problems, often in the setting of imperfect knowledge and uncertainty. Historically, the teaching and recall of factual information, illness scripts, and pattern recognition are emphasized early in medical education. Students are often left with the impression that there is a single correct answer for every question; discussions of uncertainty are rare. Consequently, discomfort with uncertainty is common among doctors. As attention to explicit teaching of clinical reasoning increases, one must consider how to incorporate uncertainty into that teaching and to transform the clinical learning environment to embrace uncertainty. The authors propose the use of several simple methods easily employed in the critical care setting to make uncertainty explicit by changing the language used for expressing differential diagnosis, incorporating probabilities into daily sign-outs, and by implementing inductive reasoning when teaching critical thinking to offer learners a strategy for working through unknown problems; these approaches may normalize uncertainty, improve comfort with it, and reduce the impact of cognitive bias in decision-making. Comfort with uncertainty may result not only in improved clinical experiences for learning by transforming a once negative cognitive experience to a positive one but also in reduced susceptibility to thinking errors.

INTRODUCTION: Dyspnea is common and distressing in patients with acute critical illness who require mechanical ventilation (MV), and is often a presenting symptom for COVID-19. However, little is known about the long-term persistence of dyspnea or its impact on patients recovering from mechanical ventilation. This study sought to evaluate early and persistent dyspnea, and its emotional impact, among survivors of respiratory failure due to COVID-19. METHODS: We conducted a prospective observational cohort study at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. We identified ICU survivors who underwent at least 48 hours of MV for COVID-19. We contacted eligible patients via telephone at 6 months post-hospital discharge. We assessed the presence and severity of dyspnea throughout their illness (ICU, hospital floor, hospital discharge, 6 months post-discharge) using components of the Multidimensional Dyspnea Profile (MDP), a validated instrument. Additionally, we asked patients with persistent dyspnea at the time of follow up whether dyspnea triggered specific emotional responses, using the MDP. Data are means + standard deviation or number (percent). RESULTS: Forty of 43 patients contacted by telephone completed interviews and 3 declined. Twenty-three patients (58%) were male, 7 (18%) had COPD, 9 (22%) had obstructive sleep apnea, and 11 (28%) had active tobacco use. The duration of invasive MV was 14+7.1 days and hospital length of stay was 24.7+9.6 days. Six-month post-discharge data revealed 25 patients (62.5%) with any dyspnea, and 10 (25%) with moderate to severe dyspnea (10-point severity scale score > 4). Among patients with persistent dyspnea at 6 months, the majority reported fear (60%), anxiety (57.5%), or frustration (52.5%). Depression was the most common severe emotional response accompanying dyspnea (10-point severity scale score of 7-10), reported by 9 patients (22.5%). CONCLUSIONS: Six months after COVID-19-associated respiratory failure, dyspnea was persistent in the majority of patients and commonly associated with negative emotions. Fear and anxiety were most commonly reported. Prior to COVID-19, long-term dyspnea had been described in up to 40% of patients after respiratory failure, though data are limited. Thus dyspnea appears as, or more, common after COVID-19. In addition to the typical components of post-intensive care syndrome (PICS), dyspnea and the negative emotional states it evokes may impair quality-of-life for COVID-19 survivors and should be specifically assessed during post-hospital care visits.

Critical thinking, the capacity to be deliberate about thinking, is increasingly the focus of undergraduate medical education, but is not commonly addressed in graduate medical education. Without critical thinking, physicians, and particularly residents, are prone to cognitive errors, which can lead to diagnostic errors, especially in a high-stakes environment such as the intensive care unit. Although challenging, critical thinking skills can be taught. At this time, there is a paucity of data to support an educational gold standard for teaching critical thinking, but we believe that five strategies, routed in cognitive theory and our personal teaching experiences, provide an effective framework to teach critical thinking in the intensive care unit. The five strategies are: make the thinking process explicit by helping learners understand that the brain uses two cognitive processes: type 1, an intuitive pattern-recognizing process, and type 2, an analytic process; discuss cognitive biases, such as premature closure, and teach residents to minimize biases by expressing uncertainty and keeping differentials broad; model and teach inductive reasoning by utilizing concept and mechanism maps and explicitly teach how this reasoning differs from the more commonly used hypothetico-deductive reasoning; use questions to stimulate critical thinking: “how” or “why” questions can be used to coach trainees and to uncover their thought processes; and assess and provide feedback on learner’s critical thinking. We believe these five strategies provide practical approaches for teaching critical thinking in the intensive care unit.

In high-acuity settings such as intensive care units (ICUs), the quality of communication with patients' families is a particularly important component of care. Evidence shows that ICU communication is often inadequate and can negatively impact family outcomes.To assess the impact of a communication training program on resident skills in communicating with families in an ICU and on family outcomes.We conducted a prospective, single-site educational intervention study. The intervention featured a weekly required communication training program (4 h total) during the ICU rotation, which included interactive discussion, and role play with immediate feedback from simulated family members. All internal medicine residents on ICU rotation between July 2012 and July 2014 were invited to participate in the study. Family members who had a meeting with an enrolled resident were approached for a survey or interview. The primary outcome was family ratings of how well residents met their informational and emotional needs.The response rate for the resident baseline survey was 93% (n = 149 of 160), and it was 90% at postcourse and 84% at 3-month follow-up. Of 303 family members approached, 237 were enrolled. Enrolled family members who had a confirmed meeting with a resident were eligible to complete a survey or interview. The completion rate was 86% (n = 82 of 95). Family members were more likely to describe residents as having "fully met" (average rating of 10/10 on 0-10 scale) their informational and emotional needs when the resident had completed two or three course sessions (84% of family members said conversation with these residents "fully met" their needs), as compared with residents who had taken one session or no sessions (25% of family members said needs were "fully met") (P0.0001). Residents described improvements across all domains. All differences are statistically significant, most with large effect sizes.At our institution, an on-site communication training program designed for integration into medical residency programs was associated with strongly positive family member outcomes and significant improvements in residents' perceived skills. This intervention may serve to prepare residents for optimal communications with patients and family members in ICUs and elsewhere.

Rationale: Opioids are commonly used to relieve dyspnea, but clinical data are mixed and practice varies widely. Objectives: Evaluate the effect of morphine on dyspnea and ventilatory drive under well-controlled laboratory conditions. Methods: Six healthy volunteers received morphine (0.07 mg/kg) and placebo intravenously on separate days (randomized, blinded). We measured two responses to a CO2 stimulus: (1) perceptual response (breathing discomfort; described by subjects as “air hunger”) induced by increasing partial pressure of end-tidal carbon dioxide (PetCO2) during restricted ventilation, measured with a visual analog scale (range, “neutral” to “intolerable”); and (2) ventilatory response, measured in separate trials during unrestricted breathing. Measurements and Main Results: We determined the PetCO2 that produced a 60% breathing discomfort rating in each subject before morphine (median, 8.5 mm Hg above resting PetCO2). At the same PetCO2 after morphine administration, median breathing discomfort was reduced by 65% of its pretreatment value; P < 0.001. Ventilation fell 28% at the same PetCO2; P < 0.01. The effect of morphine on breathing discomfort was not significantly correlated with the effect on ventilatory response. Placebo had no effect. Conclusions: (1) A moderate morphine dose produced substantial relief of laboratory dyspnea, with a smaller reduction of ventilation. (2) In contrast to an earlier laboratory model of breathing effort, this laboratory model of air hunger established a highly significant treatment effect consistent in magnitude with clinical studies of opioids. Laboratory studies require fewer subjects and enable physiological measurements that are difficult to make in a clinical setting. Within-subject comparison of the response to carefully controlled laboratory stimuli can be an efficient means to optimize treatments before clinical trials.

To investigate whether the language of dyspnea provides relevant clinical information in addition to that provided by ratings of overall dyspnea intensity when assessing subjective response to therapy, we conducted a prospective study in a cohort of 25 patients with acute asthma presenting to the emergency department of a tertiary care hospital. Patients received nebulized albuterol treatments every 20 min with a maximum of three doses. At presentation and after each treatment, patients completed spirometry, rated overall dyspnea intensity on a modified Borg scale, and selected phrases that described qualities of breathlessness from a 15-item questionnaire. Paired Student's t tests revealed significant improvements in FEV1 (from 1.39 +/- 0.66 L to 1.80 +/- 0.76 L, p < 0. 001) and reductions in dyspnea intensity (from 5.12 +/- 2.08 to 2.82 +/- 1.59, p < 0.001) after the first albuterol treatment. Dyspnea intensity continued to decrease significantly in response to the second treatment, modified Borg rating 2.26 +/- 1.52, although there was no positive bronchodilator response. The results from Cochran Q tests revealed that the frequency of the experience of "chest tightness" decreased significantly across the phases of treatment. However, the sensations of "work" or "breathing effort" persisted at the same time that the FEV1 revealed ongoing airways obstruction. We conclude that attention to the language of dyspnea would alert health care providers to residual air flow obstruction despite decreases in overall dyspnea intensity.

Vibration of chest wall inspiratory muscles during inspiration (in-phase) reduces breathlessness associated with hypercapnia and resistive loading in normal subjects and in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at rest. To evaluate further the effect of chest wall vibration on breathlessness ("breathing discomfort") in patients, we studied 10 subjects 52 to 79 yr of age with severe dyspnea (mean FEV1, 0.75 L, 27% predicted). On a single day, we used two separate stimuli to produce mild to moderate breathlessness (BR): Protocol 1, steady-state hypercapnia; Protocol 2, exercise with a lower extremity ergometer. During each protocol, we applied in-phase chest wall vibration (CW) randomly alternating with one of two controls: deltoid vibration (DV) or no vibration (NV). During hypercapnia, CW significantly reduced BR (DV, 2.9 +/- 2.1; CW, 2.3 +/- 1.4; p < 0.05; NV, 3.3 +/- 2.1; CW, 2.6 +/- 2.0; p < 0.01) without significant changes in ventilation. During exercise, CW did not significantly alter BR relative to controls. These findings may be explained by the effect of vibration on the sense of respiratory effort and/or by improvement of the match between efferent motor commands and afferent information from the respiratory system. The lack of effect during exercise on BR suggests there may be a "therapeutic window" or range of conditions within which CW is effective in reducing dyspnea in patients with COPD.

Breathlessness induced by hypercapnia may be related to the sensation of respiratory effort or to the central or peripheral effects of CO2. To examine the relationship among breathlessness, respiratory effort, and hypercapnia, we studied eight normal naive subjects. By using a visual feedback system, subjects maintained a constant ventilation of 50-60 L/min. PETCO2 was held at 40 mm Hg during the first 2 min of each trial (control period), then for 4 min (test period) was either kept at 40 mm Hg or elevated to 50 mm Hg. At the end of each control and test period, subjects were asked to give separate ratings for dyspnea (an unpleasant urge to breathe) and for the sense of respiratory effort (analogous to lifting a weight) on a 50-cm visual analog scale. Hypercapnia was associated with a significant reduction in effort ratings (-7.3 +/- 6.4, mean +/- SD, p0.05) and a concomitant increase in dyspnea (+6.6 +/- 6.0, p0.05). We conclude that dyspnea associated with hypercapnia is dissociated from changes in respiratory effort, and that CO2 has a direct central effect that leads to breathlessness. Our data also suggest that the sense of effort at a given level of ventilation is less when the ventilation is the result of "reflex" stimuli to breathe rather than "voluntary" signals to the respiratory muscles.

Dyspnea frequently accompanies a variety of cardiopulmonary abnormalities. Although dyspnea is often considered a single sensation, alternatively it may encompass multiple sensations that are not well explained by a single physiologic mechanism. To investigate whether breathlessness experienced by patients represents more than one sensation, we studied 53 patients with one of the following seven conditions: pulmonary vascular disease, neuromuscular and chest wall disease, congestive heart failure, pregnancy, interstitial lung disease, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Patients were asked to choose descriptions of their sensation(s) of breathlessness from a dyspnea questionnaire listing 19 descriptors. Cluster analysis was used to identify natural groupings among the chosen descriptors. We found that patients could distinguish different sensations of breathlessness. In addition, we found an association between certain groups of descriptors and specific conditions producing dyspnea. These findings concur with those in an earlier study in normal volunteers in whom dyspnea was induced by various stimuli. We conclude that different types of dyspnea exist in patients with a variety of cardiopulmonary abnormalities. Furthermore, different mechanisms may mediate these various sensations.

Patients with breathlessness commonly describe subjective relief when seated near an open window or in front of a fan. Previous studies suggest that a flow of air or application of cold solutions to the face, nasal mucosa, or pharynx may alter ventilation. We hypothesized that a flow of cold air directed against the cheek would reduce the sensation of breathlessness associated with loaded breathing. Sixteen subjects breathed on a device with an inspiratory resistive load (63 cm H2O/L/s) while PCO2 was maintained at 55 torr for 5 min. All studies were performed 4 times with each subject, twice with cold air directed against the cheek (4 degrees to 10 degrees C, 4 km/h) and twice with no flow on the subject. Subjects were asked to rate their breathlessness using a modified Borg scale. Cold air directed on the face reduced breathlessness induced by an inspiratory resistive load and hypercapnia (6.2 +/- 1.7 Borg scale units with no flow, 5.1 +/- 1.7 with cold air; p less than 0.002) without causing a significant reduction in ventilation. This effect was not observed when cold air was directed to the leg and does not appear to be associated with a reduction in the ventilatory response to hypercapnia or with initiation of the diving reflex. We conclude that cold air directed against the cheek significantly reduces dyspnea associated with the combination of hypercapnia and an inspiratory resistive load.