Day 1

We kicked off the course with a great session by Dr. David Roberts. We are so excited to be back in person and appreciated all the engagement so early in the morning! Let’s keep the enthusiasm going! Please continue participating. David inspired us to invest in our professional development to improve our teaching, move from teacher to educator, get renewed and refill our cup. He also talked about the ladder of competence and the goal to move from unconscious incompetence to mindful competence. He reminded us that we don’t cover material, we uncover knowledge.

In the next talk, we learned about the “Science of Learning” from Dr. Hayes (@MHayes_MD). This first session was meant to set the foundation for the whole course. Dr. Hayes talked about Adult Learning Theory and active learning strategies and encouraged everyone to try out these strategies. Dr. Hayes shared her framework for the Science of Learning as an umbrella term that includes how memory works, dual process theory, adult learning theory, cognitive learning theories, and active learning strategies:

There was some great discussion during a think-pair-share about active learning strategies. Learning happens when the brain is taxed and works hard. Who’s ready to work their brains??!!

Dr. Rich Schwartzstein then talked to us about defining, teaching, and assessing critical thinking. In the words of Albert Einstein: “Education is not the learning of facts but the training of the mind to think.” We learned about recognizing cognitive biases and strategies to combat them. We also learned the importance of accepting uncertainty. It is our job to help learners THINK! We need to move away from memorization and focus on thinking skills. We need to push learners up Bloom’s taxonomy (first introduced by Dr. Hayes during her morning talk).

Dr. Schwartzstein also introduced the concept of AI in med ed – he asked ChatGPT about a case – he notes that ChatGPT is quite loquacious! You’ll hear more about ChatGPT tomorrow.

One big take home point is to change “differential diagnoses” to “hypotheses” – what do you think? Will you give it a try? We challenge you to try it – in your notes, on your ward team, however you want!!

For links to some papers on critical thinking from Dr. Schwartzstein and Dr. Hayes check out our twitter feed - @BIDMC_Education #HMSMedEd23

Dr. Tisha Wang (@drtishawang) from UCLA kicked off our afternoon session with an interactive talk on mentorship. She told us that mentoring is about training, motivation, success, coaching, supporting and the group agreed that mentors should be caring, trustworthy, and available. She shared some of the literature with us – showing us that mentoring helps decrease burnout. She shared this great article with us: Burgess, A., van Diggele, C. and Mellis, C. (2018), Mentorship in the health professions: a review. Clin Teach, 15: 197-202. https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.12756.

The best mentors do the following:

· Encourage exploration.

· Recognize importance of relationship

· Help mentees develop CHARACTER rather than competency.

· Prioritize the mentee above organization.

Tisha shared a few personality tests with us and encouraged everyone to take them to understand their personality and style which will help people become great mentors. She talked about the DISC personality test and the 5-minute personality test (lion, beaver, otter, golden retriever). She also talked about the importance of bridge mentorship – making sure that everyone has mentorship.

She taught us about 4 types of mentors:

Mentor: guides and promotes career growth

Coach: improves performance related to a specific issue

Sponsor: nominates mentees

Connector: empowers by pairing mentees

Tisha shared her 2 mentoring tips with us:

1) Discover and help shape your mentee’s short and long-term hopes and dreams (not goals!)

2) Develop a clear action plan together to achieve these hopes and dreams by modelling A team behavior(academic, approachable, accountable, authentic) and instilling those values and character traits in them.

We ended day one with a powerful talk by Dr. Quinn Capers (@DrQuinnCapers4) from UT Southwestern on Implicit Bias in Medicine and Healthcare. He taught us that we all have implicit biases, but we can mitigate these. Implicit biases CAN BE overridden though. Awareness is the first step! Dr. Capers shared these 3 strategies to reduce/neutralize implicit bias: 1) Common identity formation 2) Perspective taking 3) “Consider the opposite”

To read more from Dr. Capers see this ATS Scholar paper – a must read for all especially for those who are in the midst of or preparing for interview season:

https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/full/10.34197/ats-scholar.2020-0024PS