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.