COE Course on Medical Education Implores Us to Think Harder About Our Learners.

Michael Stephen Kelly, MD

Resident in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics

Massachusetts General Hospital 

PGY 3

11/11/2020

Michael Stephen Kelly, M.D. 

As a trainee, so much of the job is to devote your time and energy to learn as much as we can. In caring for patients, we seek to grow from the guidance of our attendings, seek to better understand our patients and emulate our professional role models. So naturally, when trainees go to teach—whether it be our peers, medical students, or our patients—we seek to transfer that knowledge. This is the pitfall that trainees-as-teachers often fall into, focusing on the knowledge to be transferred and not on the recipient of that knowledge. The COE course on medical education was hugely helpful in giving me not only the learner perspective, but also evidence based practices that I could use to make sure I was teaching in a way that was effective for my learner. We need trainees to have more access to experiences like this.

 I can remember countless times when others have tried to teach me in the middle of a procedure, quizzing me about anatomy or complications. I remember in those moments wanting to focus on my attending, but also wanting to devote my focus to the task at hand, to do right by my patient. The COE course showed me that I wasn’t the only one, that trainees have a very hard time switching tasks from procedures to learning and back again—splitting their attention. I will certainly use the new strategies I learned during this course to change my practice away from interrupting the learner, to choosing moments for formative feedback at a time when the learner can focus on that learning.

 This course gave great opportunities to practice and hone or teaching skills, which is great to have low stakes time to workshop teaching. But, it also provided evidence for teaching techniques and theories. This is huge. We rarely have the opportunity as trainees to think in this way about teaching, often simply teaching in a way we feel like teachers we have liked did it. We must go further than this, seeking to teach in a way that is truly effective. This course helped push me along that path.