RheumMadness 2024: The Practical Impact of the Practically Perfect Season

Eric Wilson¹, Benjamin Lueck², Sabahat Usmani³, Laura Arneson⁴, Meredith Balbach⁵, Lauren Phillips⁶, John Kellogg², Courtney Bair⁷, Michael Macklin⁸, Iman Qaiser⁹, Amanda Rodriguez¹⁰, Akrithi Garren¹¹, Nina Couette¹², Melissa Briones¹³, Matthew Sparks⁷, Lisa Criscione-Schreiber², Guy Katz¹⁴ and David Leverenz⁷, ¹Duke University Hospital, Durham, NC, ²Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, ³WEISS Memorial Hospital, Chicago, IL, ⁴Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, ⁵Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, ⁶University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, ⁷Duke University, Durham, NC, ⁸University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, ⁹Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma Health Services Authority, McKinney, TX, ¹⁰Lankenau Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA, ¹¹MedStar/Georgetown Washington Hospital Center, Silver Spring, MD, ¹²Genesis Healthcare System, Columbus, OH, ¹³Loyola University, Maywood, IL, ¹⁴Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA

Meeting: ACR Convergence 2024

Keywords: education, medical, Work Force

Session Information

Date: Sunday, November 17, 2024

Title: Abstracts: Professional Education

Session Type: Abstract Session

Session Time: 3:00PM-4:30PM

Background/Purpose: RheumMadness is an online tournament of competing rheumatology concepts. The 2024 season focused on the practical impact of published manuscripts; to mirror this, we assessed the practical impact of the tournament on patient care and professional satisfaction among RheumMadness participants.

Methods: RheumMadness 2024 consisted of 16 teams of competing concepts presented as scouting reports. New this year, scouting report authors created visual aids to enhance the practical utility of their reports. Participants submitted brackets predicting matchup outcomes that were compared against the choices of a Blue Ribbon Panel (BRP). Following the tournament, participants completed a survey (excluding 4 leaders who created the survey: EW, BL, GK, DL). Respondents who agreed or strongly agreed that they could apply knowledge from RheumMadness 2024 were asked to describe at least one piece of knowledge they planned to apply. A narrative qualitative analysis was performed on the responses to uncover themes. To explore the impact of RheumMadness over time, surveys sent to participants who had engaged in a prior tournament included questions about the impact of RheumMadness on their professional activities. Prism v10.2.3 was used to graph and analyze data using Mann-Whitney U-tests to compare subgroups.

Results: There were 115 tournament participants (bracket submitters or BRP members) in 2024. We received 48 complete survey responses. Of those, 39 submitted a bracket or reported serving on the BRP (response rate 34% among 115 tournament participants). The remaining survey respondents did not submit a bracket or serve on the BRP but still engaged with RheumMadness content; therefore, all 48 responses were analyzed. Respondents included 22 (46%) attendings, 20 (42%) fellows, 5 (10%) residents/advanced practice providers in-training/medical students, and 1 (2%) “other”. 40 (83%) of these respondents reviewed half or more of the scouting reports. Among all respondents, 47 (96%) agreed/strongly agreed that RheumMadness 2024 helped them discover new concepts, and 40 (83%) agreed/strongly agreed that they could apply knowledge to their work, with no significant differences in agreement among attendings vs trainees, bracket submitters vs non-submitters, or scouting report authors vs non-authors (Figure 1). Most respondents agreed/strongly agreed that the visual aids helped them better understand (88%) and apply (78%) tournament concepts. Free-text responses described the application of knowledge in four areas: patient care, teaching, creation of a repository of useful references, and expansion of knowledge (Figure 2). Of the 26 respondents who had participated in a prior tournament, 22 (85%) indicated that RheumMadness made them happy, 19 (73%) reported applying knowledge to patient care, 12 (46%) reviewed content between tournaments, and 10 (38%) reported that participation strengthened their professional network (Figure 3).

Conclusion: RheumMadness has a practical impact by spreading knowledge that is applied to patient care, providing a useful repository of resources, strengthening professional networks, and increasing happiness.

Figure 1: RheumMadness 2024 impact on knowledge acquisition and application. Respondents were asked to rate their level of agreement (on a 1-5 Likert scale) with survey prompts about the tournament’s impact on their discovery of new concepts and their application of this newly acquired knowledge to their professional work. The proportion of total respondents (n=48) selecting a given level of agreement with survey prompts about knowledge acquisition (left, panel A) and knowledge application (right, panel B) are depicted in pie charts in the upper portion of the figure. Subgroup analyses comparing differing levels of agreement among attendings vs trainees (panels C & D, n=47 given 1 respondent self-identified as neither a trainee nor an attending), bracket submitters vs non-bracket submitters (panels E & F, n=48), and scouting report authors vs non-authors (panels G & H, n=48) were conducted using Mann-Whitney U-tests (knowledge acquisition, left – panels C, E, G; knowledge application, right – panels D, F, H). For panels C-H, the size of the colored bar corresponds to the proportion of respondents selecting a particular level of agreement. P-vales are displayed below the corresponding bar chart (p< 0.05 = statistically significant).

Figure 2: RheumMadness 2024 knowledge application – qualitative analysis. Outcomes of a narrative analysis of free text responses provided by participants who agreed or strongly agreed that they could effectively apply knowledge acquired from RheumMadness 2024 to their daily work (n=39) revealed that the tournament did so in four distinct, thematic categories (displayed in bold in the red, green, yellow, and blue colored boxes above; sample quotes corresponding to each of the four thematic categories are provided in italics).

Figure 3: RheumMadness impact on professional development. Survey respondents that had previously participated in a RheumMadness tournament (n=26) were asked to indicate the impact of participation on their professional activities over the preceding 1+ years. The proportion of respondents selecting each area of impact is depicted in the bar chart above (respondents could select multiple responses).

Disclosures: E. Wilson: None; B. Lueck: None; S. Usmani: None; L. Arneson: None; M. Balbach: None; L. Phillips: None; J. Kellogg: None; C. Bair: None; M. Macklin: None; I. Qaiser: None; A. Rodriguez: None; A. Garren: None; N. Couette: None; M. Briones: theMednet.org, 3, 11; M. Sparks: None; L. Criscione-Schreiber: UCB, 5; G. Katz: Amgen, 1, Evolve Medical Education, 6, Sana, 5, Sanofi, 5, Zenas, 5; D. Leverenz: Pfizer, 5, Rheumatology Research Foundation, 5, Sanofi, 2, UCB, 2.

To cite this abstract in AMA style:

Wilson E, Lueck B, Usmani S, Arneson L, Balbach M, Phillips L, Kellogg J, Bair C, Macklin M, Qaiser I, Rodriguez A, Garren A, Couette N, Briones M, Sparks M, Criscione-Schreiber L, Katz G, Leverenz D. RheumMadness 2024: The Practical Impact of the Practically Perfect Season [abstract]. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2024; 76 (suppl 9). https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/rheummadness-2024-the-practical-impact-of-the-practically-perfect-season/. Accessed .

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