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