Medical Education Blog

Glaxo-Smith-Kline has an innovative mentoring idea they call "key talent mentoring". Management identifies positions that will be needed in the next 5 years, then identifies possible candidates. Mentors are then chosen to assist those possible candidates to develop the skills/experience necessary to apply for those positions.

We frequently talk about succesion planning in medical schools and this might be an interesting area to explore.

Posted by Deirdre at 10:31 AM | Permalink

Hello all from sunny San Diego.

One of the most interesting mentoring ideas I have heard so far at the AAMC conference is project-based mentoring. Junior faculty identify a project they are interested in (applying for a research grant, trying a new teaching technique) and the office of faculty affairs finds a senior faculty member who would be interested in assisting them with the project. The pairs are expected to meet regularly and report to the office of faculty affairs at the beginning, middle and end of the project. Project timelines are identified at the beginning of the project. The mentoring process is then evaluated on the basis of the final product that results.

This type of mentoring is probably one of the easiest to implement because the product (the project) is very clear from the very beginning. Mentor, mentee and institution have a build in mechanism for evaluating the process based on their progress.

Posted by Deirdre at 10:50 AM | Permalink

I am off to the Association of American Medical Colleges meeting in San Diego to participate in a series of workshops about mentoring. Physicians actively participate in mentoring throughout their carreers, so I'm hoping to bring back some pertinant ideas.

Posted by Deirdre at 02:38 PM | Permalink

At a recent workshop, the following topics were suggested for mentoring new medical faculty/new physicians:

- Decrease future problems so your workload not increased
- Prophylaxis is better than Tx
- A welcoming supporting start might recruit colleagues from residency
- “Indoctrinate” persuade local way of doing things
- Orienting quickly to the system good (efficient) clinical care
- Paying forward the debt from my teachers
- Retention in our regions
- If I was involved in recruiting them, my reputation hinges somewhat on their success
- Help new person feel there is a contact person to go to when you don’t know something about the system. Its hard to admit one doesn’t know something
- Be specific about when to meet; invite them next Tuesday for lunch or regular intervals
- Get to know personal details about their background and skills and outline the plan for this relationship
- Other persons’ expertise and get to know how do they do things where they are from
- Identify potential stresses pick up vulnerabilities early and look into preventative strategies e.g. orient new faculty to local expertise in research strategies
- Practical aspects of how to get a faculty appointment and advantages of having vs. not having an appointment FOR THEM. A mentor’s role is one of exploring IF this is a good thing or not selling them on it

Posted by Deirdre at 03:38 PM | Permalink

At a recent workshop, the following topics were suggested for pre-med student mentoring:

• Role of physician


• Why be a physician


• Why do they wish to be a physician


• How achievable is the goal of being a doctor


• Expectations of being a doctor:






• Work loads


• Call


• Enumeration


• Gender issues related to profession






• Later influences re: occupation


• Advantages and disadvantages of different forms of medical training


• Devotion of training


• Sacrifices re. occupation vs. family

Posted by Deirdre at 02:59 PM | Permalink

At a recent workshop on mentoring IMG's the following possible goals were identified:

- Integrate the person into a community of practice
- OrientationTo:

• profession
• environment
• culture of community
• ethics/norms of behavior boundaries
• patients expectations of physicians in that community

- Practical advice about community-where to live
- Helping them gain access to training – education resources
- Clinical information – resources for exams
- Community resources – Practice resources
- Emotional support
- Language support
- How to write exams

Posted by Deirdre at 01:25 PM | Permalink

At a recent workshop about mentoring the following possible goals for resident mentoring were identified:

- Encouragement, graduated responsibilities
- Non-judgmental sounding board – The power that says its OK you don’t know
- Orientation to the discipline
- Family/life balance
- How to live as a …
- How to be on call
- Help with education planning
- Electives
- Identifying Journals
- Practice interests
- Person to talk about difficult outcomes
- How to interact with other members of the team
- Identify struggling resident

Posted by Deirdre at 01:18 PM | Permalink

Dr. Dork has writes a Blog about his personal experience with depression.

"Psychologically, Dr Dork shares many traits common amongst doctors. Perfectionism, fear of failure, unforgiving of one's foibles, with a record of placing one's own needs for sleep, nutrition, exercise and rest a distant second to his vocational demands. Furthermore, Dr Dork is in many ways the typical Australian male: poor at openly discussing his emotional needs, in denial of his own distress, maintaining a resolute facade to all, and attempting to drown his demons at times.

Socially, the tendency to overload himself has been a contributory factor at times. For Dr Dork, this has been another method of 'escape', at times, which is also doomed to fail. And in his dark times, the costs to relationships, family, career and finances have been steep."

Posted by Deirdre at 11:18 AM | Permalink

This message was recently posted on A Blog Around the Clock http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/01/the_science_blogging_anthology.php
"Yes! It is finally here! What you have all been waiting for, impatiently, for three weeks! The Science Blogging Anthology is now for sale. Go to Lulu.com by clicking here and place your order! You can choose to buy a PDF to download (but do you really want to print out 336 pages!?) or order the book with its pretty cover - it takes only a couple of days to arrive at your doorstep.

You can see here how it all got started, just three weeks ago, smack in the middle of the holidays when nobody was online and traffic was down to a third of the normal - and the whole thing just exploded! It was meant to coincide with the inaugural Science Blogging Conference."

Posted by Deirdre at 10:53 AM | Permalink

A multidisciplinary conference to explore topical legal and ethical issues in genetic medicine and research will run Nov. 15-17, 2007 at the University of Calgary. For information about One Origin, One Race, One Earth: Genetics, Human Rights and the Next Phase of Human Evolution, or to register, please visit http://www.aclrc.com/OneOrigin/.

Posted by Deirdre at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some significant trends in learning:

• Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime.
• Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience. Formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning. Learning now occurs in a variety of ways – through communities of practice, personal networks, and through completion of work-related tasks.
• Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime. Learning and work related activities are no longer separate. In many situations, they are the same.
• Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking.
• The organization and the individual are both learning organisms. Increased attention to knowledge management highlights the need for a theory that attempts to explain the link between individual and organizational learning.
• Many of the processes previously handled by learning theories (especially in cognitive information processing) can now be off-loaded to, or supported by, technology.
• Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).

Posted by Deirdre at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Dr. Ali Rajput, world-class researcher and professor emeritus of neurology was named 2006 Saskatoon Citizen of the Year by CTV. Dr. Rajput has spend the last 40 years in Saskatoon researching movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and was responsible for the creation of the Saskatchewan Centre for Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders at Royal University Hospital. Rajput is also credited with inspiring the Kinsmen Foundation to create the Telemiracle fundraiser for Saskatchewan people with disabilities.

His past awards include a Saskatchewan Centennial Medal, a University of Saskatchewan Distinguished Researcher Award and the Saskatchewan Order of Merit. In 1997, he was made an officer of the Order of Canada. The Saskatchewan Medical Association also crowned him doctor of the year for 2006.

Posted by Deirdre at 10:39 AM | Permalink

Something to share with family and patients at the beginning of a New Year somewhere over the rainbow.

Posted by Deirdre at 06:34 AM | Permalink