Everyone is a Teacher

Jonathan Chang, MD, MPH

Resident in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital

PGY: 1

02/17/2020 

Explaining how to read an EKG during the 5-minute teaching
session. 

I had the privilege of attending the COE course on clinical teaching. As a medicine intern, sometimes it is hard to view myself as a teacher, especially as I am myself still learning how to make optimal medical decisions. However, this course inspires me to start practicing effective teaching skills as an intern to prepare for greater teaching roles as a future resident and attending.

In one of the sessions, we were asked as a group to brainstorm what words we associated with an effective teacher we had in the past. At the end of the exercise, the instructor noted how most of the words we had offered were simply qualities of a good leader (such as “motivating,” “passionate,” and “prepared”). This has changed the way I think about teaching; what undergirds the effective transmission of knowledge is as much the team environment that is fostered as the actual way ideas are communicated. In the future as a resident and team leader, I will strive to be clear in the way I lead my team, setting expectations up front, boosting morale when needed, and creating a safe team environment.

One of the other experiences during the seminar that was particularly valuable was the delivery of a 5-minute teaching scenario. This practice in teaching has allowed me to think about how to distil what could be a complicated down to 5-minute sized tidbits perfect for teaching on the wards. During this session, I was able to distil the basics of reading an EKG in 5 minutes. Using the same kind of thought process to simplify medical topics, I have since been able to teach a medicine sub-intern how to think about and manage atrial fibrillation with RVR, even in the midst of busy clinical duties. After the teaching, he gave me feedback about how useful the teaching was, even though he had previously received teaching about the very same topic. The 5-minute teaching experience has given me tools to effectively teach on the fly.

Overall, the course was very well organized and executed, and it has and will continue to serve me well as a developing clinician-educator.