Learning Outside the Wards

Stephanie Brooke Kiser
Palliative Care - MGH

As a first year fellow I can safely count on one hand the number of times I’ve had formal instruction in clinical teaching skills, yet teaching is not only what I spent a large portion of my day doing over the last 4 years of residency but also what I aspire to include as a big focus of my career.  

Learning Outside the Wards

The Clinical Skills Teaching Course was an amazing opportunity to both strengthen my skills and spend time with other learners who are equally as invested and excited about becoming better educators.  It provided me with a solid foundation in some core principles that underlie medical education and left me wishing I had known much of the information much earlier in my medical school days.  The best part of the day was the opportunity to receive real-time feedback on my own skills, one that we so often do not get.  I would strongly encourage anyone to consider attending this course in the future!

Evidence-based Teaching and the Art of Feedback

Navid Valizadeh
Fellow in Neurocritical Care at MGH/BWH
PGY-6

The Clinical Teaching Skills (CTS) course held under the auspices of the Partners Centers of Expertise (COE) provides a timely – and necessary – window on answers to questions that often nip at the heels of burgeoning clinical educators. Throughout residency and into fellowship, physicians step into the role of teacher with increasing frequency. Unlike most procedural skills taught during training, the mantra of “see one, do one, teach one” and the familiar instructional approach is not applied so often to the procedure of teaching itself. Rather, we lean heavily on implicit lessons gleaned from observing our favorite teachers over the years and try to mimic their success without explicitly knowing what made them successful. But questions would keep arising.

They are clearly passionate - why don’t they remember what we covered multiple times in Morning Report?

How can I improve my teaching? Should the sessions be longer? Shorter? Should I be grilling with more questions? With less? 

How can I get input into whether these lessons are even effective?

The CTS course provides a path to answers by introducing the field and fundamental concepts of Evidence-Based Teaching.

Hall in the Hale Institute from Transformative Medicine

I was abashed that the concept took me somewhat by surprise. Although it stands to reason that scientific investigation might have provided some insights into effective teaching and learning methods, this had never come up in my years from medical school through fellowship. I had been learning mostly by ‘feel’, following what seemed a reasonable approach – and had adopted a similar strategy when I myself was called on to teach. 

The science of how we learn has significant implications for how we ought to teach. These insights impact all aspects of clinical teaching, including formal scheduled didactics, small group sessions, and the sharing of brief clinical pearls on rounds. Indeed, given the lifelong learning ahead, my own approach to learning future material will also be positively affected. The COE-hosted workshop has provided me tools to optimize my approach to clinical teaching and will influence how I structure discrete teaching sessions with team-members going forward.

Further, the CTS session exposed me to how one might pursue this passion further by incorporating the study of teaching-in-medicine within a career path, by working to further research in this area, and by championing these insights within one’s home departments. Although broadly relevant, the insights of this field represent a specialized domain of knowledge that requires study, dissemination and advocacy. This can be seen, in part, by the adoption of Fellowships in Clinical Education that are supported by some departments. 

The second key insight from the CTS course pertains to feedback. Throughout training, we give and receive feedback with frequent regularity.

View from outside the walk-way from BWH to Hale BTM

Both acts present their own difficulty. The frustration of a request for feedback being met with a non-committal “pleasure to work with” is a familiar refrain – though my greater trepidation has been invariably reserved for the giving of feedback. The old chestnut It is better to give than receive does not hold here. Knowing the deflation that a lack of useful feedback can cause, I feel a pressure to provide something of value when the end of a rotation approaches and the request inevitably arrives to share some constructive insights. I doubt I am alone in this feeling.

Here, too, the COE session offered some guidance. Although initially skeptical of the endeavor, the effectiveness of holding small mock ‘micro-teaching’ sessions proved difficult to deny. These sessions acted as a tool to conduct a ‘dry run’ of teaching material and solicit surprisingly remarkably insightful feedback from peers in a small time-frame and with punchy efficiency. Key in facilitating this punchy effectiveness was the framing of goals and attention to a few core concepts of the cognitive science of adult learning.

Adopting this framework serves to revolutionize the effectiveness of feedback as it helps focus the observer on fundamental aspects that can be highlighted for improvement in future iterations. It is no exaggeration to state that this session has changed the way I view both soliciting and providing feedback. I will be using these insights throughout the remainder of my career, throughout and beyond fellowship.

These insights are relevant at every stage of a physician’s career – but are particularly timely and important to trainees. Given the nature of education as a two-way street and the unique transitional role of residents/fellows as they occupy the position of both learner and teaching simultaneously, the CTS course contains much that speaks to the experience of such trainees. In helping to improve the skill of education at each level of training, the support of COE to allow trainees to attend these sessions is invaluable.

Building a career in medical education research!

Megan Lockwood, MD

Rheumatology Fellow at MGH, 
PGY-5

It was a thrill to participate in the Clinical Teaching Skills course through the Partners GME Centers of Excellence in Medical Education opportunity! 

Networking with and learning from several

inspiring trainees interested in med ed!

This training course was a fantastic opportunity to network with and learn from other GME trainees in medical education.  There were several skills-building sessions that will help me to become a stronger clinical educator.  Clinical teaching is a key part of our role as trainees in academic medical center, and it is crucial that we get evidence-based training to develop this skillset.

We also learned about the cognitive science of teaching and adult learning, which will not only help me to be a more thoughtful educator, but also provides a foundation to think more critically about medical education research.  This course identified several important areas of research within medical education, and has provided me with an important skillset to move forward with a career as an educational leader and researcher.

Learning how to be a more effective clinical educator

Meabh O’Hare

Neurology resident at MGH/BWH

PGY: 4

The Clinical Teaching Skills (CTS) course was a fantastic introduction to the world of evidence-based clinical education that will continue to inform my approach to teaching and feedback for years to come. I have always been interested in improving my skills as a clinician-educator, especially now that I have taken on the role of senior resident,

Neurology residents practice eliciting deep tendon

reflexes on each other

but never really knew how to go about this. There are certain clinician educators that I have always looked up to and attempted to emulate, but they always made effective teaching look so effortless that I assumed it came very naturally to them.  

What I really took away from the CTS course was the knowledge that there is a huge foundation of research into what makes a good teacher, and more importantly that it is possible to self-improve as a teacher by careful planning, self-analysis, and getting good quality feedback from students. It seems very obvious now, but prior to this course I hadn’t really considered how much thought and preparation go into planning effective clinical teaching sessions, even seemingly casual bedside encounters. During the course, we had the opportunity to deliver a brief 5-minute pre-prepared “micro-teaching” session, and the feedback I received from my peers, as well as myself (by reviewing a video of the session) was invaluable.  

I now know that preparation ahead of time is key for me personally in order to deliver effective teaching moments, and that taking an iterative approach will lead to improvement over time. In addition, I intend to be much more thoughtful and prepared in future with regard to both giving and eliciting feedback from students, as I learned this is only likely to be a useful endeavor if approached in a structured manner with advance notice given to students.

A must-do course for all clinical trainees!

Kayla Roddick, ND
Spinal Cord Injury Medicine Fellow, PGY-5 VA
Boston/SRH

Clinical Teaching is an important part of medical education, whether you are participating from the learner side or the teaching side; We are trainees are fortunate to be in a position where we participate from both sides. 

At the beginning of medical school, we are submersed in new materials and new guidelines, and expected to learn them quickly. Once we begin clinicals, we learn how

Niagara Falls, Canada.  Location of the Canadian Spinal Cord Injury
Rehabilitation Association Biannual Conference 2019, which I attended to
enhance my knowledge of rehabilitation burden on global health care.

to apply what we learned in practice, and during residency we learn how to become more efficient and enhance of knowledge of the ever-expanding and changing health care world.

I found this course to be extremely helpful in identifying different learning types, and how to approach each one systematically. I feel like the course prepares you to be able to give adequate feedback to learners who are struggling in a non-judgmental way, as well as to advocate for feedback for ourselves as learners.   It was especially beneficial to be surrounded by a multi-disciplinary group and learn about the struggles from both an acute care side, and a chronic/rehabilitation side.  Since participating in this course, I have already modified several of my presentations to be more focused and more interactive. Creating a “toolbox” of information to be able to sit down with residents and medical students to discuss topics on the off chance that you have a free minute. One of the hardest parts of teaching during training is time management and this has allowed me to focus on the more relevant topics and use them during coffee breaks. 

I strongly encourage trainees to participate in this course, it would be especially beneficial to take it once early in training and then again later as a refresher and to see how your perspectives change after taking on more of a teacher role.

Teaching as a fellow and beyond

Karolina Brook, MD
Fellow in Pediatric Anesthesiology at Massachusetts General Hospital
PGY6

Many of us know that the origin of the word ‘doctor’ comes from the Latin word docēre, meaning ‘to teach’. Thus the act of teaching is ingrained in every single one of us that enters the world of medicine. Ironically, despite many hours of lectures, grand rounds and teaching sessions that we have all attended, the “art” of teaching – how do you actually teach? – is something that is not actually taught.

I am in a unique position in that I graduated from anesthesia residency and worked for a year as a general anesthesiologist prior to coming back to fellowship.

Teaching at the COE CTS workshop.
Explaining how to do an arterial line
with just words ends up requiring a
lot of hand motioning!

It was during that year and in my first months as a fellow that I realized that I did not know how to teach others. In the field of anesthesia, not only do I have various anesthesia professionals that I may be teaching (nurse anesthetists, student nurse anesthetists, and residents), but also oftentimes the critical learning happens at critical moments – namely in the operating room, where focusing on the patient obviously comes first. These challenges became clear to me over the past year, and I am lucky in that I am in such a resource rich environment that I can take steps to fix this knowledge gap.

I was fortunate to spend the day at the COE Clinical Teaching Skills workshop that was designed for residents and fellows. Apart from Keith Baker, I was the only anesthesia professional there. The day was great in that it taught some fundamental teaching skills – the science of it as well as the art – but also gave us an opportunity to try out these skills on our colleagues (see Image 1). I highly recommend this course to all residents and fellows, and wish that all doctors could have the privilege of this course.

My next step is that I am attending an intensive three day course through the Harvard Macy Institute, where I will be honing these teaching skills. I am excited to take back these skills to my fellowship where I will be teaching residents – and beyond to when I return to being an attending.

COE clinical teaching skills course was phenomenal! Highly recommended!

Jose Mena, MD

Internal Medicine, NSMC - Salem Hospital 
PGY3

Going to the COE course in clinical teaching skills was an excellent decision.

I know that all what I learned will be very helpful for my future year as chief resident and later as a fellow. I will be able to teach, learn and give feedback in a better way. 

I have already started to give feedback to my co-residents with the tips I learned. This makes me feel more comfortable and capable while doing it.  

5 min teaching scenario -watching yourself teaching
is one of the best ways to improve your teaching

I have also noticed improvement (in my interns) after better feedback was given. 

In the future I hope to keep teaching more and more daily. I would love to be involved in medical education specially to med-students. This has always attracted me.

I highly recommend this course to every resident or fellow. I think that, even if you are not interested in teaching, it will give you “pearls” of how to be a better intern, resident or fellow. Everyone needs to teach someone at some point! You will also be able to clarify if you would like to be involved in this area in the future and is great opportunity for networking.

Residents as Teachers!

Hawra Al Lawati
Internal Medicine, 
PGY2

Residents take on the educator role from a very early stage by virtue of taking care of and teaching patients and being around students. Therefore, it’s important to incorporate formal opportunities during residency training to learn how to carry out this role effectively.

Attending this course allowed me to reflect on my past experiences as both a learner and a junior educator.  I learned more about the key concepts and evidence behind effective adult learning. It was great to engage with trainees from various levels of training and department and learn from their unique experiences/expertise.  I was able to apply some of the things I learned from our sessions including giving the chalk talk and delivering feedback.

A list of qualities that make a good teacher that was

populated by the course participants

The course was a wonderful opportunity to gain tools on how to deliberately contribute to creating a culture of learning and growth in healthcare. Shortly after attending this I started an inpatient rotation where I was leading a team with two interns and two medical students.

A great start on how to be a better teacher, a day in the Clinical Teaching Skills workshop by COE

Hassan Mashbari

Acute Care Surgery Fellow at MGH
PGY-7

It has always been a main concern to me regarding the best way to teach juniors and the appropriate method to provide feedback. I was very happy when I saw the announcement from the COE regarding Clinical Teaching Skills workshop. Was even happier when I was given the opportunity to participate. From the pre-course materials, the amazing interactive discussions, the great faculty to the great colleagues and new friends, it was just a fantastic workshop.

The art of feedback, R2C2 method

My future plan was to do a master’s degree in medical education, but this workshop broaden my prospective in many issues. Did not stop talking to my colleagues who did not attend about what I learned and what I’m going to still learn about. This was a major step for me, and I’ll make sure to implement what I learned in my day to day interaction with medical students, residents and colleagues.

Clinical Teaching Skills Course – a chance to become a better teacher and join a Partners-wide community of educators

Gabrielle Kis Bromberg

MGH Internal Medicine
PGY3

The COE’s Clinical Teaching Skills Course was a wonderful experience. Not only were we afforded the opportunity to hear from education experts who have helped shape GME in their respective fields, but also we had the chance to meet and to work with other like-minded trainees from across the system. Learning the pedagogy behind why we teach the way we do alongside residents and fellows from diverse fields pushed me to incorporate strategies used in different specialties that I had not previously encountered and greatly enriched the experience. Amazingly since completing the course, I have run into many of my co-participants around the hospital and in the context of patient care. These encounters have led to a better work environment, further evidence of the importance of cross-specialty learning opportunities. I look forward to being able to apply many of the skills learned during this COE in the coming years in my work as a hospitalist.

MGH Women!

Be Inspired at Learn Serve Lead, the Annual AAMC conference

Arianne “Cuff” Baker, MD

Chief Resident in Pediatrics at MGH, 
PGY-4

Last weekend I flew to Phoenix, Arizona for Learn Serve Lead 2019, the annual Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) national conference. This year there were nearly 5,000 registrants from across the country. Attendees are a mix of clinician-educators, deans, administrators, researchers, and other people who care about medical education at both the undergraduate and graduate level. I was excited to immerse myself in the world of medical education and be surrounded by people with different perspectives and expertise.

The Saturday plenary presentation was a truly outstanding talk by Bryan Stevenson, JD, a lawyer with years of experience defending clients in difficult situations. His presentation was one of the best I’ve ever been to. He described his personal career history in becoming a lawyer and how he ended up defending people on death row and children in dire straits. He gave advice for how we as medical educators can help fight social injustice in our country: get proximate to the people you want to serve, change the narrative of inequality, be willing to be uncomfortable and do things that are inconvenient to make change, and stay hopeful that change is possible. I was inspired by his talk and many other attendees must have been, too, since many people mentioned “getting proximate” in other sessions throughout the weekend. 

The panel and facilitator presenting
'Highlights in Medical Education: Novel Curriculum'
at AAMC's Learn Serve Lead 2019 in Phoenix, AZ.
From left to right, panelists Sara Clemons, MEd,
Dr. Arianne "Cuff" Baker, Dr. Lauren Block,
and Dr. Fatimah Bello, along with facilitator Dr. Cayla Teal

Attending this conference was an excellent step in my professional career. A project I have been working on at MGH was accepted for an oral presentation as part of a panel called Highlights in Medical Education: Novel Curriculum. My co-panelists also discussed new curricular interventions they’ve been studying at different institutions. It was the largest crowd I have ever presented to – more than 200 people! I was nervous but ended up really enjoying the opportunity to share my work with such a diverse group. 

One highlight of the Learn Serve Lead conference was a session on Sunday with Editors from several of the highest-impact journals in medical education. Each editor briefly presented on their journal’s scope and what they look for in submissions. We then had the opportunity to rotate among 4 different tables with different journal editors to ask questions in small group formats. I discovered a section in one big journal that I hadn’t noticed before that seems like a wonderful place to submit the scholarly workup of my project for publication, and I am excited to have this on my docket. 

Going to the conference reinforced my excitement and commitment to building a career in medical education. For future attendees, it is a busy weekend with many possible events at every time slot. The organizers have an app that you can review ahead of time to decide which sessions you want to go to, and since there are so many I highly recommend taking some time before the conference looking through them all. The app also has the slides for every session embedded for download, so you can bring home the content and refer to it later – and you can see what you missed in concurrent sessions that you couldn’t get to. Overall it was a wonderful experience and I am so thankful to the Partners Centers of Expertise for making it possible to go!

AAMC’s Learn Serve Lead Conference: Statistical Significance is Not Everything!

Kristen Jogerst

Surgical Education Research Fellow - Massachusetts General Hospital
PGY-3

The title of this blog post is borrowed from one of the Medical Education Research Certificate (MERC) workshop’s slides. This session led by Dr. Larry Gruppen, PhD reviewed the methodologies behind proper “Hypothesis-Driven Research.” This session also reviewed the importance of asking “feasible, interesting, novel, ethical, and relevant” research questions. The session ended by reviewing the importance of effect size, sample size, and statistical significance within a power calculation. Often in education research, the sample size is small and therefore may not achieve an adequate enough power to detect statistical differences or statistical significance, even though a true educational difference exists. Because of this sample size conundrum, the effect size measurement can show that a difference between two populations of trainees - those who received the educational intervention and those who did not - does exist. The effect size is conveniently independent of sample size and can be very powerful (no pun intended) at detecting meaningful differences in educational interventions.

Conference attendees were greeted with a warm Phoenix
welcome at the annual AAMC conference

During my surgical education research fellowship I am working to obtain my MERC certificate by attending the MERC workshops offered by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). This month I went to the AAMC’s annual conference to attend two MERC workshops: “Hypothesis-Driven Research” and “Questionnaire Design and Survey Research.” Both sessions were very informative and taught me new ways of thinking about research design and methodology. As I work towards a career in surgical education and education research, the workshops are helpful reviews on proper educational research methodology. They also often serve as dedicated time to work through potential pitfalls in my planned projects with experts in the field. If other medical education community members involved in research are considering attending these MERC workshops, I highly recommend them. If you are like me, you may at one point thought that because you have background training in research methods, you didn’t need further training in education research methods. Having now learned a lot about the different lens through which educational research examines research questions, hypotheses, statistical methods, and analytics, I realize how important this extra training is.

Enjoyed learning a lot about medical education research methods
at the full-day MERC workshop. Also enjoyed reviewing the material at a
local coffee shop during a mid-day break

Beyond the MERC workshops, I am so thankful I attended the AAMC conference this year - it exceeded my expectations. The opening plenary by Bryan Stevenson reinvigorated my passion for medical education and surgical training and was a powerful reminder about the importance of helping those who need it, not just those who can easily access our help. He encouraged all attendees to get proximate to the poor, marginalized, and unequal in order to make our communities healthier. This session, like the MERC workshops, challenged me to think outside of my comfortable framework: both within educational research and medicine.

What are your thoughts? If you had to add a post-it note
to this conference board, what would you write? This conference board
was a helpful reminder to me that health care,
medical education, and education research are all inter-related

He talked about how through hope we can change the status quo, but that being hopeful takes courage and can be uncomfortable. He reminded us that as humans we like comfort, but we have to commit to being uncomfortable. This conference taught me that prior research paradigms might be more comfortable, but they don’t necessarily always fit within the context of education research. Certain career trajectories and day-to-day care for our patients and instruction for our trainees might be more comfortable. If they are, we have to stop and ask ourselves: why are they comfortable? And can we change: our research designs, our teaching methods, and our patient care delivery, to make them more uncomfortable, but also more hopeful for future trainees and for future patients we serve?

I am looking forward to completing the remainder of the MERC workshop sessions to obtain my certificate. But I am also looking forward to attending the AAMC annual conference in the future. I originally attended for the purpose of completing the workshops, but was inspired by the many conference sessions and look forward to going back to learn more next year.

I learned more than medical education research methods during the AAMC conference. I appreciated the reminder that paradigm shifting education, research, and patient care might be uncomfortable, but we have to try. We will not accomplish everything, but we owe it to our patients to be hopeful and to try

Getting Feedback on Giving Feedback

Bryant Shannon

Emergency Medicine at MGH/BWH

PGY4 

I participated in the COE Clinical Teaching Skills Course along with residents and fellows across Partners’ Training Programs. This course caught my interest as an excellent supplement to my PGY4 curriculum. In our residency, the fourth-year resident supervises and teaches junior residents. The residency curriculum was designed to prepare graduates to transition into the role of academic clinician and medical educator after graduation. This requires a skill set different from the prior three years where the emphasis is on developing our clinical skills.  

I appreciate those attendings and senior residents who have been part my growth as mentors and educators. These interactions have shaped my own interests in becoming a medical educator. However, as much as I could easily identify who the great teachers are in our program, I never previously considered what made them so strong. The role of ‘pre-tending’ has not been as easy and seamless as I imagined. It is challenging to give junior colleagues thoughtful feedback that encourages them to flourish. This course gave me an opportunity to practice teaching and creating an optimal learning environment. 

Working with trainees from across specialties allowed for an exchange of unique perspectives and an opportunity to share best practices.

Implementing what we learned while on shift in the ED

One of the things I took away from the course was to engage with learners at the start of their shift to identify areas of focus. Having a preemptive discussion about specific areas the trainee is working on will allow me to be more specific and in tune with their goals. Narrowing the focus can allow for higher quality feedback that is more tailored to the individual. The course also introduced the R2C2 Feedback Model (see below). This four-stage model lays out the framework to high-quality feedback, emphasizing the importance of interpersonal skills.

This course also explored the human limitations with learning. This was a helpful realization for me as I often supervise junior residents while they are doing new procedures. When a learner is concentrating on a new procedural skill, it is nearly impossible for them to listen thoughtfully and digest feedback simultaneously. This will influence the way I teach procedures with the majority of instruction and feedback occurring not in real time but before and after.  

Finally, one of the lectures from the course discussed the evidence-based literature around cognition and retention of information. It was super interesting to hear about techniques for remembering and processing both concrete and abstract new information. I wish I had known more about these topics at the beginning of medical school, which would have helped me better digest the large volume of information thrown at us. As I prepare for my EM Boards and my Critical Care fellowship, I will be continuing to practice and better refine these skills both to improve myself as a learner and as an educator.

Teaching Towards a Culture of Growth-Oriented Learning

Rebecca Lichtin, MD

BWH Internal Medicine Residency – DGM Primary Care 
PGY1

It’s amazing the things we are expected to be instinctively good at as doctors.  As a budding intern, I am now in both the learner and the teacher’s shoes; it is hard not to feel the pressure to magically possess a deep fund of knowledge and to effortlessly be able to pass that knowledge onto the medical students with whom I work.

The Clinical Educator Teaching Course offered a fantastic survey of evidence-based teaching tactics. It certainly made me feel more comfortable in my role as a teacher, and it is a course I would highly recommend to anyone who wants to hone their abilities as a clinical educator.  However, what most impacted me most was the time we spent discussing growth-oriented learning and feedback.

In medicine, we are taught that framing is everything. The way a patient tells their story, the way a resident or attending presents a case – it biases our cognitive processes and can significantly affect outcomes. The same principal holds true for medical education. In a flipped-classroom format, we explored two opposing learning mind sets: growth-oriented and performance-oriented.  Classically, medicine drives us towards a performance-oriented frame.  It is easy to feel the need to know everything about everything, asking questions can feel like a sign of weakness, and any form of feedback leads to either defensiveness or self-doubt.  On the other hand, a growth-oriented mindset appears the ideal framing for medical learning environment – it fosters a mindset of continuous learning, where mistakes are used as an opportunity for growth and targeted feedback offers a direction for further personal growth. 

Giving a micro-teaching talk

In a room full of PGY 1's to PGY 7's from a range of medical and surgical fields, it was fascinating to discuss how different components of a growth or performance-oriented mindset framed each of our experiences with clinical education. It was fulfilling to then practice giving and receiving feedback on micro-teachings in small groups within a goal-oriented frame.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have attended this teaching courses as an intern.  The frame with which I view my personal development as a learner and teacher, and the frame I hope to set for those I work with in the future has been shifted for the better. Through these multi-disciplinary courses, and ideally similar sessions held among house-staff, I hope we can instill a culture of lifelong growth-oriented learning in generations of trainees to come.

Learn, Serve, Lead AAMC Conference

Akhila Narla, MD
MGH Internal Medicine
PGY-1

At the latest AAMC conference taking place in sunny Phoenix, Arizona, the excitement around the theme of "Learn Serve Lead" was palpable in the packed conference rooms and buzzing attendees moving throughout the various presentations and exhibits (Image 1). Several inspiring figures from inside and outside of medicine gathered to discuss the importance of how academic medicine can truly play its part in creating a bright future for healthcare in the broadest sense. Bryan Stevenson, public interest lawyer and author of Just Mercy, gave an impassioned speech regarding his 

Learn Serve Lead Welcome

commitment to social justice, illustrating his journey that brought him to a career challenging bias in the criminal justice system. Bryan Stevenson, who I have heard speak in college and in medical school, managed to strike a chord yet again with me as he spoke during the plenary session of this conference that I attended recently as an internal medicine resident. He relayed his inspiration for what he does. He reiterated that "we have to get proximate", something we are blessed with in medicine as we witness the lives of patients in tragedy and triumph, and particularly when we get close and up front with the communities we wish to serve.

The conference allowed us to hear from leaders across fields, including patient perspectives from scholar Dr. Kate Bowler on what providers

"Faith, Morality, and Mortality: Everything Happens" session

could have done to help her through her tragedy and triumph as she relayed her own experiences (Image 2). Attending was a wonderful experience to expand my horizons regarding what several people are working on through their career trajectories in medicine and where we can improve in our day to day jobs. I left feeling reenergized and empowered to be able to use my career to promote health equity.