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Thinking about the Road Ahead and Incorporating Me ...
Thinking about the Road Ahead and Incorporating Me ...
Thinking about the Road Ahead and Incorporating Medical Education into the Journey (On-Demand)
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Welcome to the Augs FPMRF Fellows webinar series. I'm Dr. Julia Schoenig, moderator for today's webinar. Today's webinar is thinking about the road ahead and incorporating medical education into the journey presented by Dr. Star Hampton. Dr. Hampton will present for 45 minutes. The last 15 minutes of the webinar will be dedicated to Q&A. Dr. Hampton is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the Division of Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery and interim chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. Dr. Hampton received her medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and completed both her obstetrics and gynecology residency and urogynecology and reconstructive pelvic surgery fellowship training at New York University School of Medicine. She joined faculty at Brown Medical School in the fall of 2006. Dr. Hampton has a strong interest in clinical urogynecologic research, medical education, mentoring, and medical education research, authoring more than 50 manuscripts. She holds current and past leadership roles in many national organizations such as the Society of Gynecologic Surgeons and the American Urogynecologic Society, the Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and the International Organization for Women in Development. Prior to taking on the role of interim chair, Dr. Hampton held the role of vice chair of education for our department and was Brown Medical School clerkship director for the obstetrics and gynecology clerkship for nine years prior to that. She has influenced OBGYN medical education at the national level as past chair of APGO's Undergraduate Medical Education Committee. Dr. Hampton has won numerous teaching awards at both the local and national level. She holds an interest in global health and serves as a team leader for a group of physicians who travel annually to Sub-Saharan Africa for obstetric fistula repair and education. She is a recognized leader and lectures nationally on topics of urogynecology and reconstructive pelvic surgery, medical education, and global health. Importantly, she's an inspirational leader, educator, and mentor for trainees at every level. Learning from Dr. Hampton is truly a privilege, with one former trainee stating, operating with Dr. Hampton is like nothing else. She exudes knowledge and positivity. She made me feel like an amazing surgeon and an amazing person, and I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. I'm so happy she's here to tell us more about how she does it tonight. Before we begin, I'd like to review some housekeeping items. This webinar is being recorded and live-streamed. Please use the Q&A feature of the Zoom webinar to ask any of the speakers questions, and use the chat feature if you're having any tech issues. AUG staff will be monitoring the chat and can assist. You can take it away, Dr. Hampton. Thank you, Julia, for that wonderful introduction. I really appreciate it, and I really appreciate you for inviting me to give this talk. It is a true honor to be here. I wish I could see who was on with us tonight. That's one of the things that webinars, I'm like, I wish I could see who I was talking to, but that's okay. Julia very eloquently said that I'll be presenting for 45 minutes with 15 minutes of Q&A, but honestly, this is a very open talk, so I'm happy to stop at any time. I'm going to be asking you to do some, perhaps some entries into the chat function anyway, so whenever there's a question or you want to stop me, please do so, because it really is meant to be an informal talk that will be helpful to you and your life, and I'm very excited. This is one of my, was a really fun talk to put together because it's all on topics that I love, so I have no disclosures. I, objectives for tonight, we're really going to be thinking about what are your career goals and passions, what are the tools that can help you negotiate and create opportunities that align with those goals, and then how can you really think about excelling as a medical educator as you move ahead in your, in your career. So, whoop, sorry, went the wrong way. So before we start, what I'd like to ask you to do is pull out a pen and a paper, a pencil and paper. I know those don't exist that much anymore. Maybe you'll, you'll have your phone or some other way that you take notes, but, but something that you can write notes on and sort of jot down your thoughts on, because I think that will be an important part of tonight's journey together, and the other thing that I'm asking you to do is just bring your authentic self, really think about what you want tonight and what, what is true for you and not necessarily what you think should be true for you. So, so what is, what is your really, what's your authentic self tonight? So the first thing I'm going to ask you to do as an exercise is think about why you logged on tonight. Why did you come to this talk in the first place? And what are sort of your goals for the next hour with me speaking? And that should sort of start to point you in the direction of where you want to go as far as your future trajectory, right? You signed on to this webinar for a reason, something caught your mind, caught your eye in the title or in the presenter or whatever, but what was it about the title or me or Dr. Schinnick or Augs that made you want to come to this webinar tonight? So for the next few minutes of the talk, I want us to really think about dreaming big, and then we're going to think about setting goals and taking action on those goals. So how do you start setting goals for your future, and how do you start thinking about what you want to do with your career and your life? You know, I think careers and life are very fluid. If somebody told me 15 years ago that I would have done and achieved the things that Julia talked about in my intro, I would have thought like, you're crazy, no way. But you know, life takes you in different, on different roads and in different paths and, and you kind of end up at places that you might not have thought about before, but sometimes you do have to think about, you know, where you're going and what that, where that road is leading. So it is important to think about what your, what your goals are, right? Step one in setting goals is taking the time to do that, right, is actually thinking about yourself and investing time in yourself and investing time in your career. That's really, really an important thing, and I think often we forget to do that. We're so focused on, you know, we're caregivers, we're focused on our patients. Many of us are women and we are very giving of our time and our, our, just our, ourselves and our colleagues who are, are not women are also very giving in this profession. So it's just something that we don't think about that often to think about ourselves and our career. So the first step is taking the time. So congratulations, you carved out an hour of your night tonight to be here. And I'm going to go back to that why slide. You obviously thought it was important to be here. So congratulations, you took the first step. So that's great. And I also want to just say that goals, when you think about goals, they're really important, both personally and professionally. And I think that sometimes we compartmentalize those and think, oh, these are my professional goals and these are my personal goals. But very often those two things need to come together. You know, sometimes we call that work-life balance. I actually heard a really great talk the other day that called it work, work, work and personal life harmony, meaning that really we're strumming lots of different strings all at the same time to create a beautiful song with all of those things coming together. So I really liked that, that image of creating a beautiful life with all of the different strings that come together to create that beautiful life, career, personal life, maybe kids, maybe a partner, maybe the other things that you incorporate into your life. But it should all come together to create that beautiful song for you. And that may change over time. So the first thing that I do want to think about is what are, you know, what are professional goals? We're going to, you know, you can certainly think each of us has our own personal goals and we should always keep those in the back of our mind. And those might influence our professional path, as I just said. But let's think about professional goals tonight. So the first thing I want you to think about is, you know, take that pen and paper that I asked you to bring with your authentic self and talk, think about what gets you out of bed in the morning, right? What do you, you know, what do you get excited to get out of bed for when it comes to your career and work? What is it that gives you energy, right? What energizes you during the workday? What kind of fuels you? What do you wish you had more time on your calendar? You know, do you wish that your calendar had more OR time? Do you wish that your calendar had more office time? Do you wish that your calendar had more time to sit and mentor, you know, residents or students? More time to do research? More time to read journal articles? What do you wish your calendar had more time for? What do you feel really great about at the end of the day, right? What do you go home and say, God, that just was like so awesome. I had so much fun doing that, or I just feel really good about myself for doing that. You know, what, what is it that, what is it that makes you, that smile on your face? Is it a thank you note that you get from a mentee or a patient? Is it, you know, finishing a really great case in the OR? Is it getting something published? It might be all of those things, but those are important things to remember in your life of like, what makes you feel really great about doing or accomplishing at the end of the day? And then finally that, that leads into, you know, what are you proud of, right? What are, what are you super proud of? What do you, what do you, you know, want to think back on and say, gosh, that was, that was something I'm really excited that I accomplished. So take some time and, and write, you know, I hope that you're writing as I talk to you and give you some of these prompts. The other thing I want you to think about when thinking about career goals is, and professional goals, and this can also be for personal goals, but think about people you want to, you know, vision, those people you want to emulate, right? Vision those people that you've met along the way in your career. What have they contributed or achieved that you feel like, gosh, I really just, wow. What are their core values? What do they project to you as their core values? And how do they incorporate those into their personal and professional lives? And I think that those are important things for you, for you to kind of envision. It's, you know, later on, I'm going to talk about being a great educator means role modeling. And I think that often you, you know, we have great role models along the way of our career and our personal life. And just think about those role models of what are their core values? What are their day-to-day activities? What are the things that you think they accomplish that are really important to you? Okay. Another exercise that you can do to really think about where you want your personal life to go is what are, you know, try and pick five words, okay? We're thinking words here, descriptors, that you hope would describe you in a, you know, in a toast, in a retirement, you know, an article that you hope maybe a trainee would talk to, say about you when they introduce you for an Augs webinar. What are those five words that you really hope that are used when people describe you or think about your career path? So what are, you know, what are some of the things that you really would like to achieve? Or what are your values that you would like to have somebody talk about when they, when they describe you? So think about words that you might want to have describe you. I'm going to give you a minute because I'm giving you lots of tasks here. Hopefully you're furiously typing or writing, and I'll give you a minute to think about those before I go on to my next slide. And then finally, you know, what's, what's a really big picture achievement, sort of pie in the sky thing that you think you would like to, to achieve career-wise? This can be, you know, something that is really a reach goal, something that you think you'd really love to do. It could be something in leadership. It could be a huge contribution that you make. It can be something in service, maybe an innovation, maybe a research finding, maybe something else totally different, not in any of those buckets, but just think of one pie in the sky thing that you, gosh, that would be really cool if, you know, I closed out my career and I accomplished that. I think, you know, another very interesting exercise to do when you think about career goals and your trajectory is to, you know, there are so many inflection points in our lives as physicians, especially as physicians that have gone through medical school residency and fellowship and a job, right? They're, they're, each one of those has an inflection point. And very often we're asked to write a personal statement or a, you know, some sort of a letter of intent or descriptor for ourselves at each one of those inflection points. A cool exercise is to actually go back and look at your personal statements from either, you know, for going into residency or for going into fellowship and seeing what your sort of dreams and thoughts were at those points in your life and see if those have changed a little bit. Maybe they have, maybe they've gotten bigger, maybe they have, maybe they've just morphed a little bit, but I guarantee you that your core values have probably stayed the same from those personal statements. And they sometimes can, can serve as really great inspiration to look back on. I actually, a funny story that I told Julia in the operating room the other day is my daughter asked me if I had an Apple Mac book or whatever that was called that I think Reese Witherspoon had in Legally Blonde that you open and is, and is all colorful. And I did have one of those. And so we found it in the basement and opened it. And on the desktop was my personal statement for fellowship actually. And so I read it and I did this exercise myself just by chance, because, you know, I couldn't, I did not know where my personal statement from fellowship lived at this point, but it lived there obviously. And I found it. And, you know, it was really interesting to read, but, you know, the core values were all the same. It talked about taking great care of patients and, you know, making an impact on women's lives through education and through research. And, you know, many of the things that I, I still hold true today. I think that doors opened, but I didn't know, you know, were going to open to me at that point in my life, but all of the core values that were in that personal statement remain true today. So it was really fun to read. I encourage you to do that for yourself. So now that you've thought a little bit about, about sort of, you know, what you'd like to think about sort of big picture, what a big, you know, far reaching goal could be, what are some, some things that you want to really, some role models that you might want to emulate, et cetera. You know, you should have a couple of good goals going ahead and thinking about your future. Hopefully some of what you thought about over the past several minutes included educating, right, or teaching it forward. That's probably why you're here tonight. If it didn't, then maybe you'll, you'll, it'll encourage you to think about including that into those goals after you, after you hear my talk tonight. But hopefully some of those things that we talked about really included educating or teaching it forward. Medical education, like all forms of teaching, is a really incredible way to impact the lives of our patients through that ripple effect, right? You teach one student or one trainee, that student and trainee can affect so many more women than just you. So think about all of the students that you've taught over, and residents that you've taught along the way, even just in, in your short time as a fellow, and think about how that multiplies your effect, right? So if you teach somebody to do a vag hist really well, you're not the only person that can do that vag as well for the number of women that you operate on every year, but now you've taught them how to do it, and they can affect that many more women. And then if they pass that on and teach it to somebody else, that many more women gets help. So it really is your way to make a difference in the lives of women and not only your trainees. It also, you know, I can't tell you how heartwarming it is to, and I'm sure that many of you have, have already seen this, but to get notes or, or words of gratitude from trainees or students, because really when you, when you take the time to teach somebody, or when you take the time to mentor somebody, you've really touched their lives in a way that's a little bit different than some of the other things that we do. So we're all about making a difference in people's lives. That's why we became physicians. And medical education is a whole other aspect of making a difference in people's lives, so that you can again, multiply that effect of your way of making an impact, not only on patients, but also on trainees and on students. Where am I? There we go. So, okay. So how do we, you know, you're thinking about your future career. You want to be probably education is somewhere in those goals, right? Your goals are over here. Your future career and medical education need to merge together to reach your goals. And how do you do that? How, you know, tonight was filled as thinking about incorporating medical education into your career path. So how do we do that? Well, the first thing I'm gonna let you in on is a secret of mine, which is, you know, take every open door. As I said, you know, I never would have guessed that my accomplishments or my CV would be what they are today, 15 years ago, but it was because of open doors that happened and that I decided to walk through that brought me to the point where I am today. And that is really important to remember because, you know, you're not gonna gain anything if you don't take those leaps of faith sometimes. Early in your career also, it's important to remember that sometimes, you know, later in our career, we can be a little bit more picky about the doors that we walk through and those opportunities that we say yes to. But early in your career, it's important to think about, you know, taking advantage of a lot of opportunities because you're still exploring what gives you that energy, right? You're still exploring what gets you out of bed. You're still exploring what you want more on your calendar. That slide that I talked about early on. So you won't know that something excites you or kind of you're really great at it unless you take the opportunity to walk through that door and see if you, you know, if it fits you. So the first thing that I would say for medical education is really take opportunities and get involved. There are so many ways that you can get involved in different levels of education. So when you are at your own institution as a fellow or when you're looking at a career as an attending, you really want to think about the opportunities that are afforded to you. If there are not a lot of opportunities, you can make these opportunities. You can go to leadership and propose opportunities, right? And those are really great times to propose leadership times for yourself. So for example, if an FPMRS elective for students doesn't exist at the institution that you are an attending at, you can propose that, right? And then become the leader of that FPMRS elective for students. And that is a really great way to move your career along and have a medical educational leadership role. So again, there's so many ways to be involved in education. On the student side, you know, think about preclinical courses, basic science courses. There are OBGYN interest groups that you can become involved in or lead. There's the clerkship, which is a major educational role. As I said, there's electives that are great to become involved in. And for any of these, you could just, you could be a participant in these, or again, you could have that leadership role. And smaller leadership roles like, you know, an OBGYN interest group then grows, right? The medical school starts to know you. They start to know who you are. Students start to have a buzz about you. And that just grows into other opportunities. There's transition to residency courses now, commonly called bootcamp courses that are really fun to be involved in. There's mentoring residents for a career ahead in, I'm sorry, there's mentoring students for a career ahead in OBGYN and in residency. So there's so many different levels that you can be involved in student education. For resident education, there's simulation. There's fundamentals of laparoscopic surgery now for our OBGYN residents. You could design a surgical curriculum. You could take part in a surgical curriculum. You could lead journal clubs or take part in journal clubs. Again, you could be a rotation director for the residents that might be rotating through the division of FPMRS. You could be a residency program director. You could be an associate program director. You could be a formal mentor for a resident. You know, any place that you're working may have a lot of different opportunities. And again, if they don't, take that as an opportunity to approach leadership and say, hey, I have a great idea and I'd like to lead it. And then of course, for fellows, you very much know and are familiar with so many of the opportunities for teaching for fellows also. Journal clubs, being involved in the research curriculum for the fellowship, being involved in simulation for the fellowship, being the fellowship program director. So again, I put all of this out there because I think that very often we become, you know, we don't think about the wide range of opportunities we have as educators to become involved and to become leaders, right? So, you know, part of it is you wanna develop a career. You wanna develop a name for yourself. How do you do that? You need to start with some smaller involvement, but then grow that into leadership roles. And there are, again, so many ways that you can develop leadership roles or develop curriculum. Medical education research. So research in medical education is great and it's a fantastic way to grow your career. It's also really hard. It tends to be very difficult because often when we look at the impact of research, right, we're looking at the impact of something on patient outcomes or patient care, right? That's the whole point. We want to take better care of our patients. To see the impact of a curricular innovation or to see the impact of some sort of a medical education innovation on that endpoint of patient care takes a long time and it's very difficult to do. So to do really robust medical education can be very, very difficult. This is a really cool instrument to familiarize yourself with called the MRSC. If you are interested in doing medical education research, it's a great study quality instrument to see, you know, where does your study sort of rank as far as its quality? You know, you want a higher number. It means that your study's of higher quality, but it also just looking at the study quality instrument gives you an idea of what you could do. Like, are you doing only descriptive analysis or could you do something beyond descriptive analysis, right, when you're looking at data analysis? So it just gives you ideas of how you might be able to structure your medical education research. But medical education research is really exciting and a lot of fun. The other hard thing about medical education research is just the sheer numbers. It's a lot easier to do student research because you have a lot of students at once versus when we do fellowship research, right, or fellows. I have, you know, I have four fellows. So if I do an intervention in my fellowship, I'm looking at working with four people. So probably it's better for me to be very multi-institutional which can be great, but it also, you know, is a lot harder. Anytime we are working with more institutions, et cetera, it just is way more administrative time. So thinking about those types of things and thinking about impact of curriculum on education at different levels can be a little bit more difficult as well. So think outside the box and think about scholarship, right? So scholarship can come in so many different ways. We think traditionally in research, we're trained fellows, you know, we're doing, you have your fellows research curriculum and you're really trained to think about research, but think about scholarship. I often want my medical education colleagues to think about medical education scholarship over research. And what I mean by that is, you know, think about writing curriculum and then publishing that curriculum. Think about videos and different forms of scholarship that are very, are becoming much more acceptable as things on your CV for promotion and for visibility. MedEd portal is a great thing to familiarize yourself with if you're interested in medical education as a career and medical education scholarship and research, it's a place that you can, it's a deposit repository for curriculum and for different innovations that is peer reviewed. And so when it's time for your promotion, things that have been accepted to MedEd portal are usually very favorably looked upon. So that's an important thing to think about and to become familiar with. Okay, don't think that societies and going to different society meetings is just schmoozing, right? It is definitely not. It's really important to network, right? It's really important to build relationships. So take advantage of society meetings to network and to build relationships. Think about all of these societies, AUGS, APCO, ACOG, SGS, AAMC, they all have committee work, right? AUGS and SGS both have education committees. APCO has a lot of different committees that you can start to think about being involved in. It's really exciting to think about all of the committee work that you could do nationally in education, in even our fellowship, in even our specialty organizations like AUGS, like SGS, et cetera. This really helps you gain a national reputation in education. It helps you gain a reputation for opportunities, for promotion. Many of these organizations also have really fantastic leadership courses. For example, APCO every January has a faculty development course that focuses on medical education and how to become a really great educator. The AAMC has early career and mid-career women's career faculty development seminars. It also has our minority faculty development seminar, all of those are really valuable. I attended the mid-career several years ago and it was extremely valuable to my progression in my career. So I really urge you to become familiar with what our different societies and what our different organizations have to offer, what committees are in these different organizations. And it's important to think about becoming involved in them. Have a lot of mentors, right? Mentorship is so important and really think about finding mentors that are diverse and having a lot of different mentors. Think about those, again, envisioning those people that you wanna emulate. Think about asking those people to be mentors. You can find those mentors at those national meetings that I just talked about. You can find them locally at your medical school. You can find them in your division. You could find them in your department. There are so many different places to find mentors. Don't be afraid to reach out with a quick email. You know, I think most people are flattered if you reach out to them and most people have 15 minutes to grab a cup of coffee or have a chat over the telephone. That's happened to me very often and it's always the best part of my day, right? It is to talk to a mentee. So you're really usually not bothering people. And I think people are pretty good about saying no if they can't fit you into your calendar. So take time to reach out, but also be a good mentee, right? Be purposeful, be organized in what you are trying to look for, trying to get out of a conversation. Be reliable, right? Follow up with emails, be on time to meetings, be somebody that your mentor would want to invest in and then be respectful of their time, right? So 15 minutes to half an hour is usually enough to get some really good advice and to form a relationship, but be very respectful of mentor's time. Mentors can really be useful at different inflection points in your career, but they can also be lifelong and they can be people that you will refer back to as you move along. So very often I haven't heard from a mentee in a couple of years even, and then they'll reach out to me again and that's totally fine, right? Our lives take us on different paths and we might need different types of advice at different points. So don't worry if you haven't reached out to an old mentor in a while, I'm sure they're gonna be really glad to hear from you. I stole this slide from somebody that I did a talk with actually earlier this year and it doesn't fit totally with my talk, but I think that it goes along with what we've been talking about. So thinking about a person, now that we've talked about sort of your goals and how you wanna get there, developing your vision and mission statement those first exercises that we talked about was really thinking about your core values, what is your vision? And then actualizing your vision and mission is just thinking about those activities that are gonna align with those goals and then enlisting others to help you, right? And helping getting mentors to help you with those goals. So it does align a little bit with what we've been talking about and I really like this. Okay, so you guys are all going to be looking for jobs eventually. You may be in that stage right now or you might be thinking about it very soon. When you're looking at future opportunities, you really wanna look at does this institution value education, right? And what are gonna be some of the clues that that institution values education? Do they have a vice chair of education, right? Do they support their educational leaders? Do they have outstanding educational programs? How are their educational programs ranked? Do they have professional development programs within their medical school or the department that focus on education or being an educator? And how are their training programs looked upon by their trainees or their students? What does mentorship or support of their trainees look like? Do they value their trainees and students? Do they have a track record of educational scholarship? Right, is there anyone there that are in current or past national educational leadership roles? So those are all questions that you should ask yourself as you're looking at different places. If medical education is something you really would like to have included in those career goals and in your path and you wanna have it be a little bit easier for you to develop that career in medical education is does that institution really value education? And some of those things I just talked about can give you that clue. And then when you're finally sitting at the table to negotiate, right, what can you ask for? So maybe you've decided to take a job and to pursue an opportunity and you're really excited about it. It has a lot of different things that are gonna be positive for you. Think about what you can ask for. And these are things other than just dollars, right? Dollars are very hard to come by these days, but certainly there are other things that an institution can do to support you in your career path. Are they willing to invest in you, right? Ask for that investment. Ask for money for leadership courses, right? I just said that APCO has leadership courses. It has the APCO Scholars and Leaders course. It has a Surgical Scholars course. Ask for money and time to attend those courses. AAMC, Early Career, Mid-Career, Minority Career courses. Those are all courses, again, that you can negotiate time and money for. The Augs Leadership Program is an excellent program that you could negotiate time and money for. So when you're sitting at the table a higher salary might not be something that a chair or a division director is able to give you, but they might be able to invest in you in different ways. And sometimes that's even more important than bumping your salary up by $5,000 because it shows that investment that they care about your growth as a physician. Ask for an educational leadership position, right? I just went through so many on that other slide that you could think about. Ask for that. Say, hey, if I come, could I lead XYZ? And I'd really like to do that and see how receptive they are to that. And then you're already in the door with an educational leadership position. Again, this is a little bit difficult because time does equal money when it comes to our clinical work. But if you can carve out a little bit more time for yourself in your week and some more protected time, that can be really valuable to you to do the things that you really want to grow your career. So see if you're able to negotiate that if dollars aren't something that can be negotiated. And then again, I talked about time money for professional development. So that's all really important. And then finally, once you're at that position, you need to understand how teaching efforts are awarded and recognized, right? Because if you're going about your life and doing all of these amazing things, and then the award ceremony comes up at the end of the year and you're nowhere on that list, you need to understand what the metrics are for getting an award, right? Is it because you need to teach in this particular course to get an award? Is it because you need to have a particular number of student evaluations? That's certainly the case at our institution. And often I have great educators, but they just don't reach that threshold of evaluations that they need to gain an award. And so they don't get the award, which is unfortunate. So I always like to inform them of that so that they understand that they need to have a certain amount of student evaluations in order to be considered for an award. So you should know the metrics, right? Definitely know the metrics. Okay, so I just talked a lot and I clearly have more than 45 minutes to say, but I'm gonna run through the next couple of slides quickly so that we can have a little bit of time for question and answer. So in order to be a really awesome educator and get the awards, what do you have to do, right? So one of the objectives of this talk was to talk about how to be a great educator. So educator actions, there are two places usually that we are educators. One is the operating room, one is the outpatient clinic. And these are actions that have been found to be extremely positive for our students and trainees. So in the operating room, and you're gonna see that both of these areas are a little bit different, but the actions underneath the areas are quite similar, right? So setting expectations in the operating room is similar to orienting your learners, et cetera, and having a focused teaching agenda. Demonstrating sensitivity to learning needs is assessing learners, allowing for active participation, active learners, teaching with enthusiasm, being a positive role model, remaining common courteous, and then giving feedback. So these are all actions that have been really identified as what outstanding educators have. So the first one I wanna just touch on is setting expectations, right? Clear expectations, clear communications allows for a clear outcome. You need to align yourself with your student or your trainee and really orient them to the expectations that you have for them. So for example, you yourself should be familiar with learning objectives for whatever course or for whatever level of trainee that you are teaching. You know, if I'm teaching a resident and I think that their learning objective should be over here, like where a fellow's learning objective is or down here where a student's learning objective is and I'm not familiar with those ACGME objectives for a resident, I'm not going to be teaching the right things to them, so, and we're not going to be aligned. So I need to be familiar with learning objectives, what are the expected learning outcomes. I need to be familiar with their level of experience, right? If I'm taking somebody through VADGIS, for example, and they've done 52 and I'm teaching them like they've never done any, that's not going to be a very valuable experience. If they've never sat for a VADGIS and now I'm teaching them over here, like somebody that's done 52, that's not going to be valuable for them either. So we really need to be aligned on what their level of experience is. We have a focused teaching agenda. So this is something that I often will tell people, you know, I think it sometimes becomes super overwhelming, like, oh my God, I need to teach this person how to do a VADGIS by the end of this, this case. No, you should think about a few things that you're going to focus on and really make sure that they come away from that case with, it might take several to put together to make them an expert in a VADGIS, but you're not responsible for teaching them every single one of those things. And in fact, adult learning shows us that people really only come away with basically three major teaching points from every teaching opportunity or teaching, teaching time. So that's the same thing for outpatient teaching. I think outpatient teaching can be super overwhelming to people because you look at your schedule, you have a ton of patients. Oh my God, I have to teach the student or this resident or this fellow about every single one of these patients. And it's like, gets super overwhelming, choose a couple things, right? Choose a few patients that you're going to focus on or a few diagnoses that you're really going to focus on. And by the end of that morning with me, hopefully that student really understands stress incontinence, right? Because we saw two patients with stress incontinence, we could really get into it. We could really talk about it. And they left understanding stress incontinence. They didn't need to understand the pelvic pain and the urgent incontinence and all the other things that I saw that morning. They come away with a really solid knowledge of stress incontinence and they had a really great experience because I was able to have a focused teaching agenda. So again, being aligned on that though is important, right? The student shouldn't be sitting in my office feeling like they're a failure because they're not seeing every patient with me. So if I tell them at the beginning, like we're going to focus on these few things, that's going to align us and it's going to have set clear expectations. So this is really important, especially for medical education, right? Involve your learner. You must involve your learner. Active learning is so, so, so important in medical education. And there are so many ways. I think people also really like get so worried about active learning because they're like, I'm really busy. I can't have somebody with me. I can't have them doing the whole case. It's a really complicated OR case. I can't have them like doing it. I have every single student prep my patient before the case starts and that automatically makes them feel like they're part of a team, right? They already have their hands dirty. They're already touching the patient. They're already more comfortable with the OR because they have just been involved in the care of this patient in a very simple way that is not going to harm the patient, right? Maybe the prep will get a little messed up. Maybe we'll have to redo it. That hardly ever happens, but it's a really nice way for them to start. You know, remembering those small inflection points where you can involve a student, putting in a Foley, touching something, having them step in when retraction is fairly easy is so important. And just build that to different levels, right? Build that to your resident, build that to your fellow. Same thing in the office. You can certainly have learners do different parts of that office visit without having them do the entire office visit, right? Or feel like they have to go and get like the best history and then they're going to forget things. Maybe they just go in and take, you know, a small part of the history, or maybe they're just going to do the family history or passing out the history or something like that. But have them be involved in the patient care somehow, because that is how we learn. And really involvement is so key when it comes to medical education. Okay. Another really, really, really important point. In fact, Julia said this in her lovely words in her introduction to me, is the trainee that Julia quoted probably doesn't remember what I taught them, right? Maybe they do. But they definitely remember how I made them feel because Julia said it. And that's incredibly important as an educator, right? So we know that as an educator, you're setting the tone for the day. Students learn through role modeling, right? They're learning through observation. I often will hear my fellows actually say the same words as me when they're taking a resident through a case because they have role modeled me for, you know, two, two and a half years. And now they're taking the resident through the case and they're saying the same exact things that I actually say. We are complete role models. You need to really think about that and think about the positive tone that you're setting. It's very well known that remaining calm and courteous in the operating room is incredibly important to trainees and promotes positive learning and promotes retaining of information. So that's an incredibly important thing as well. Making sure you acknowledge and engage all learners, knowing the names of the people in your operating room or in your office, acknowledging them, engaging them, asking them questions, so important. Modeling your professionalism, teamwork, and respect is so important. It's all of that hidden curriculum that maybe you're not teaching that Vag Hiss, but you're teaching how to be a calm surgeon who is courteous and respectful in the operating room. That's almost as important, right? It's, you know, don't forget that hidden curriculum that you're teaching as well. Talking and teaching throughout the case is so important as well. That will make your learner feel very involved if you talk to them. And I do a technique of conscious Socratic questioning, which is really thinking about a culture of education, of educational investment, but respect, right? So questioning respectfully and asking questions that aren't, you know, aren't going to make the learner feel like, oh my God, I don't know the answer to this, it's the worst thing in the world, right? You need to create an environment where questioning and talking things through is acceptable and not knowing the answer is okay and we can talk through and learn together. You need to give learners time to think about questions and think about, you know, probe them with little hints of how they can get to the answer, right? There are a lot of different ways to ask strategic questions. So remembering questions are actually the lowest level questions. So just asking questions that are pure recall are the lowest level type of question that you can ask. And they often will put your learner on edge because if they can't purely recall, they're going to get it immediately wrong, right? If you're asking like, how many is this or where does that or what's this identifying listing naming that puts people very much on edge. Think about applying questions, right? Think about analyzing questions. Think about real questions of understanding. Those are way more important than recall questions. Yes, often as a physician, you need to have that recall, but talking through things and understanding and applying is actually a higher level way of thinking. And that will really be more worthwhile to your learner to ask those higher level questions. There are a lot of different teaching models that you can use as well. The SNAPs model and micro skills model are outpatient teaching models. And then the BID coach and predict model are our teaching models. Going through them really quickly, you know, you can look up the SNAPs model, but it's, you know, summarizing, narrowing and differential, analyzing the differential, probing by asking questions and then plan a management. Micro skills model is very similar, right? You get a commitment, like what do you think is going on? You probe for supporting evidence. Why do you think that's going on? Reinforce what's doing, what was done right, get a commitment again, and then teach general rules. That's all outpatient teaching. BID model for the operating room is, you know, doing a needs assessment beforehand. What do we need to work on, doing, having very focused objectives set during a briefing and then doing a debriefing of reflection and reinforcement and then correction. And this is just an example of the BID model for a hernia repair. It's a really nice, again, a nice model for OR teaching. The coach model is also a nice model for OR teaching. So setting a clear performance model, this is what I want us to work on, promoting a very open environment, assessing the performance, communicating effectively throughout the operation and then following up and providing help. The PREDICT model is basically an educational timeout at the start of the case. So talking through the patient's presentation, risk factors, what a physical exam was, what the diagnosis is. It's really just talking through the case so that you're teaching. I like this. I think that you can actually do this during the case as well. So you don't necessarily need to do the timeout and take the time to do the PREDICT model before the case. But it is a nice way to set the tone for education if you do an educational timeout. And then feedback. Feedback is, of course, incredibly important as an educator. Feedback is not assessment. To be a good educator, you should be giving some formative feedback that's timely, right? Give it during the outpatient encounter, during the operating room. It should be nonjudgmental, right? It should be descriptive. It should be frequent. Don't delay it. And very specific. So something specific for your learner to work on. You really want to change behavior and motivate your learner through feedback, right? You want to encourage self-assessment through feedback. So all of that's really important as an educator to remember as well. And then finally, to be a great educator is reflect on your job, right? How are you doing as an educator? How do you think you're doing? It's always great for me to give these talks because I remember the things that I'm not doing, right? And that I should be doing as an educator. And so, you know, what should I be changing in my day-to-day life as an educator? So it's really important to reflect. A really nice thing to do is review evaluations. If you don't see your own evaluations, if you're not given them, you should ask for them, right? You should absolutely have access to your evaluations from your students and your trainees. And so you should ask for them. So take that time to reflect. So it is a real talent. And I want you to really remember that every single thing that you do in life, I'm very big on this, needs to be on your CV, right? So if you're taking the time to mentor someone, if you're taking the time to do things, think about how that can get on your CV. Have a list of mentees on your CV, right? Or maybe you need to formalize a mentoring group in your department or in your division. Think about how you can formalize a lot of the work that you're doing in a way to get it onto your CV to move that career path forward and to build your career as a medical educator. Again, so much of what we do as physicians, especially as educators, is very selfless, and we don't really think about it, and it's very time consuming. But think about how you can create things that can then go on a CV that you can get credit for. So it's really important. And to keep track of it. And remember also what I said at the beginning, stay fluid, right? Those goals that you wrote down on your phone or in your journal before we started that I asked you to pull out, and some of the things that you're thinking about, those things might change, right? Different doors might move you to a different place, but remember the harmony that you want to build. Remember strumming those strings to make the song for you sound really beautiful. And to make the sound for you at different points in your life sound beautiful because your life is going to change, right? Your life is going to change from what it is today to what it might be in five years or 10 years or 15 years, and we can't predict what that is going to be, but I guarantee you it won't be exactly the same as it is right now. And so you might have different needs and you might have different career aspirations or goals, and just make sure that they're harmonizing for you and don't be afraid to allow them to harmonize because that's a really important thing. You want your song at the end of the day to be beautiful for you. So again, today, if we have like 30 seconds left, but I'll stay over nine o'clock to answer questions if people have them. So I do ask usually at the end of a talk for people to reflect and build a contract for themselves on, you know, again, adult learning, you take away three things from every encounter. So what are the three things that you're going to take away from today's encounter? Maybe there are three things that you want to work on. Maybe there are three things that you want to weave into your, you know, your skills as an educator and your next educational encounter with a trainee or a student. But what are three things, put them down, take, I'll give you 30 seconds, 10 seconds each to write them down in that journal or on that iPhone or wherever you're writing things so that you can solidify that for yourself. I'm, you know, as I said, I absolutely don't mind people reaching out. So please feel free to reach out to me anytime, but I'm available right now if you want to ask questions. And I think you need to do that through chat or Q&A. So please feel free to ask anything or make a comment or do any type of sharing that you want to now through chat or Q&A. And I really, again, you took the first step, which is spending an hour on your career and your goals and what you want to think about, which is really important. And I encourage you to make sure you take time to do that throughout your progression as an outstanding FPMRS clinician, educator, researcher, because you're all going to make a huge difference in many patients' lives and in many trainees' lives. So I'm seeing through chat. Thank you so much. I'd love to hear advice, comments on how to balance the strange position of being both a learner and a teacher as a fellow. Hi, Kate, second year fellow at MedStar, awesome. Great questions. So yeah, you guys are all, that's such an interesting thing that I'm going to have to incorporate into my next talk, Kate, about how to balance being both a learner and a teacher at the same time. So that's a really, really interesting question because as a resident, you're also a learner and a teacher at the same time to students, right? And sometimes as a student, right? Like you might be an elective, like an M4 teaching an M3, but also clearly still a student. So that does happen to us so often as we progress through our career. I think the biggest key to that is remembering that you want to be great at both, right? Like you want to be absorbing everything, but you also want to be teaching and remembering that you probably can't do it all at once at the same time, right? Like you can't be absorbing everything in the OR and teaching in the OR. So allowing yourself latitude to think like, this is an involved case in the OR. Like I need to concentrate on this and I need to really focus on what's going on. I might not be the best teacher today in the OR, like in the actual OR because I'm focusing so much and giving yourself latitude for that. But maybe you would take the time before or after the case to be that outstanding educator, right? So being in the case with the resident, thinking about things that they should be thinking about throughout the case. And that really helps you teach also. I love as in attending using my fellows in residence as educational multipliers. If I asked Julia to teach something to a resident, it's my way of knowing that Julia knows what she's talking about, right? Because it's my little test. Now Julia knows my secrets, but it also allows her to practice teaching. So also setting those expectations with your attendings is important. And saying like, hey, I'd really like to think about taking the resident through this part of it or through something. What do you think is appropriate, right? Probably not all parts of the case are appropriate for you to take the resident through, or maybe they are depending on the case, but thinking about what parts of the case are. Like for my first year fellows, like that might just be closures or things like that. For my second year fellows, it's going to be a little bit more advanced. And for my third year fellows, it's going to be me, you know, trying to step back and put, I call it cotton balls or marshmallows in my mouth and not say anything because it's so hard for me not to say anything in the operating room, but trying to be quiet so that they can teach. So setting those expectations with your attending also is really important. Any other questions, comments, hopefully that was a little bit helpful, Kate. I know it is a weird, it's a weird position that you guys straddle as, as fellows. Other questions from people? Nancy Ringel, I see you're on. Hi. Well, awesome. If that's it, on behalf of AUGS, I'd like to thank Dr. Hampton and everyone for joining us tonight. Our next fellow webinar will be on Wednesday, March 23rd at 8pm, and you can visit the AUGS website to sign up. Thanks everyone. If you want to contact me, I don't know, I'm not 100% sure what AUGS fellows day is anymore because I haven't been involved in the past couple of years, but you can contact me if, if you were interested in, in me doing something. I see that through the chat. All right. I'm going to sign off. I think that's it. Thanks, Julia. Thanks, AUGS. Thank you everybody for being here. Thank you.
Video Summary
The video is a webinar titled "Thinking About the Road Ahead and Incorporating Medical Education into the Journey" presented by Dr. Star Hampton. Dr. Hampton is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and interim chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Brown University Women and Infants Hospital. She has a strong interest in clinical urogynecologic research, medical education, mentoring, and medical education research. During the webinar, Dr. Hampton discusses the importance of setting goals and taking action in medical education. She emphasizes the need to take advantage of opportunities to get involved in medical education at different levels, such as teaching students, residents, and fellows. Dr. Hampton also talks about the value of mentorship and the importance of having diverse mentors. She suggests seeking out leadership roles in educational committees and national organizations, as well as pursuing medical education research and scholarship. Dr. Hampton provides strategies for effective teaching in both the operating room and outpatient clinic, including setting clear expectations, involving learners, and giving timely and specific feedback. She encourages reflection on teaching and suggests methods for incorporating medical education into career goals, such as negotiating professional development opportunities and asking for educational leadership positions. Dr. Hampton concludes the webinar by urging participants to stay fluid in their goals and to strive for a harmonious balance between personal and professional aspirations in their career as educators.
Keywords
webinar
medical education
Dr. Star Hampton
goals
action
mentorship
teaching strategies
leadership roles
career goals
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