Harvard Macy Institute Podcast

Season 4 Episode 2: Educating for Adaptive Expertise with Martin Pusic, Bill Cutrer, and Elissa Hall

In this podcast Vic speaks with Martin Pusic, Bill Cutrer, and Elissa Hall about their article “Educating for Adaptive Expertise: Case Examples Along the Medical Education Continuum.” 

What do we mean by adaptive expertise? Our discussion starts with some definitions and examples, including: Routine procedural approaches, plus creative innovative ones, when the situation calls for it.” This capacity is critical in a healthcare environment brimming with complexity.

How do we educate for adaptive expertise? Our guests suggested 4 instructional strategies, including: Developing deep conceptual understanding, exposure to meaningful variation, emphasis on productive struggle and discovery, and metacognitive strategizing. They drew upon the Master Adaptive Learner conceptual model.

We worked through the practicalities of this kind of education in the undergraduate, postgraduate (Emergency Medicine) and continuing professional development educational contexts. This is not easy! Our guests explained how they have worked through various barriers and constraints to realize the opportunities for fostering adaptive expertise in our healthcare professionals.

Happy listening!

Season 4 Episode 1: Social Media, Networking, Community and the Human Connection

In this podcast Vic speaks with Justin Kreuter, Patricia Tran, and Teresa Chan about ‘Social Media, Networking, Community and the Human Connection’ We recorded the conversation live during  week 6 of the 2023 Harvard Macy program - Transforming your Teaching using Technology. In a metacognitive move, we hoped our podcast conversation would illustrate some of the points we made in the conversation – “the medium is the message”!

 

Our discussion started with a recap of the week 6 session. This included a self-assessment by scholars on their current professional social media engagement, a wonderful precis of the various social media platforms by Patricia Tran, and group work on social media dilemmas for health professions educators. The podcast conversation explored these themes, with a focus on the different roles in which that health professions educators might be using social media and online engagement – as teachers, as institutional leaders, and as faculty developers. We finished with a deeper dive on podcasting, and a shout out to own Harvard Macy Institute podcast.

Happy listening!

 

 

Season 3 Episode 8: Digital Presence with Teresa Chan

In this podcast Vic speaks with Teresa Chan about ‘digital presence’ - our online personas – and about the opportunities to disseminate our scholarship via online platforms. We recorded the conversation live at the 2022 Harvard Macy program - Transforming your Teaching using Technology. In a metacognitive move, we hoped our podcast conversation would illustrate some of the points we made in the conversation – “the medium is the message”!

We started with Teresa’s website, and reflected on the choices she made in establishing this as her online ‘homebase,’ referencing Michael Hyatt’s conceptual framework and book Platform. We talked about the process of curating such as website as a digital portfolio, and the practicalities, such as hosting on Wix or Squarespace. Teresa talked about how she got interested in online presence and the encouragement of mentors like Jonathan Sherbino from KeyLime podcast.

Our conversation turned to Teresa’s article Social Media and the 21st Century scholar (one of the pre-readings for the Transforming your Teaching using Technology course). In this piece, Teresa and her co-authors offer 2 personal case studies of how to use social media for education, scholarship and health advocacy. In our further conversation Teresa talked about the ‘moral imperative of getting great science out there,’ and we walked through an example of how she might disseminate the messages in an article accepted for publication. Twitter features heavily in Teresa’s dissemination strategies, but we also considered the opportunities of other platforms - Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

We finished with a deeper dive on podcasting, including Teresa’s own MacPFD Spark podcast, and our Harvard Macy Institute podcast. Our ‘live audience’ on Zoom joined the conversation with questions from the chat, and we talked about podcast length, audio recording, and how to listen…

Thanks to the faculty team and scholars who joined our conversation, and to Teresa Chan for sharing her wealth of experience.

Season 3 Episode 7: Assumptions about Teaching and Learning with Liz Gaufberg and Shalice McKnight

Assumption: Something we take to be true without proof. This simple definition belies the complexity of how our assumptions drive our behavior. Some assumptions are explicit (and we are aware of them), but most are implicit; biases and beliefs under our awareness but still powerfully influencing our actions.

Our assumptions about teaching and learning might require considering some fundamental questions: What is learning? (informative/transformative); What is the difference between teaching and learning? What is the role of a teacher? (Expert? Guide? Coach? Co-learner) Goal of educational institutions? (carry on traditions/make change) In practice, we want to be principle-driven vs. defaulting to formats we are familiar with.

In this episode we speak with Liz Gaufberg and Shalice McKnight about ‘assumptions’, particularly our assumptions about teaching and learning.

In our conversation, Shalice and Liz share personal and professional stories of reflection on their assumptions. We discuss core elements of the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Educators in the Health Professions that support this, including the Step Back consultation method in project groups, and Liz’s own sessions in the program. We talk about humble inquiry, the power of listening, and taking just a moment when we think ‘WTF’. (thank you Jenny Rudolph)

Happy listening!

Season 3 Episode 6: The Learning Hospital with Jim Gordon

How do we train and transform our teams and our systems for better patient care in the 21st century? What’s the role of simulation, of interprofessional learning, and of integrating education with workforce development in large healthcare institutions?

In this conversation, Jim Gordon shares his approach to being Chief Learning Officer at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He talks about the challenges and opportunities of connecting pockets of educational excellence in large organisations, and of meaningfully bringing interprofessional teams together to train and learn together.

The conversation was prompted by the announcement of a $50million philanthropic gift to support these endeavours at MGH, including a Learning Academy, and a Learning Hospital – a physical re-creation of multiple departments in the hospital to allow cross department team training.

Exciting times for Jim and his team, and opportunities to learn from others doing great work on building teams and systems for 21st century healthcare. 

Season 3 Episode 5: Leading Innovations in Healthcare and Education

Why would a medical school work with a business school to create a program for Leading Innovations in Health Care & Education? In this episode of the podcast we preview the upcoming program, and speak with program co-directors Liz Armstrong, Josh Nagler and Derek van Bever. We discuss the history and conceptual underpinning, and then take a more granular look at the activities for the week and how scholars can best prepare. We hear from Sarah Dawit, program alumnus from 2021 about her reflections on the program and on joining the HMI community.

Season 3 Episode 4: Better academic Writing with Lorelei Lingard

Most of us would like to ‘write better’, but few of us make intentional efforts to improve. Lorelei Lingard is internationally known for her efforts to help health researchers and clinical scholars become better writers. In this podcast we talk about her Writers Studio courses and her book “Story, not Study”, 30 Brief Lessons to Inspire Health Researchers as Writers.

Lorelei Lingard has a ‘day job’ as Professor in the Department of Medicine, and Senior Scientist at the Centre for Education Research & Innovation, both at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University in Canada. With a PhD in Rhetoric, she studies the communication practices of clinical teams, and evidence-based educational initiatives to improve teamwork.  She received the Karolinska Prize for Research in Medical Education in 2018.

In this conversation, she shares details of her training in rhetoric, her transition to working in health professions education, and her joy she finds in coaching relationships as a writing mentor. We spoke about the Writer’s Craft - a transformative series of articles on better academic writing - written by Lorelei and her colleague Chris Watling (also an HMI alumnus). Each article offers a succinct pearl: Mastering the sentence, Enlisting the power of the verb, Get control of your commas, and many more. Building on this series and their coaching work, the duo has now produced “Story, not Study”, 30 Brief Lessons to Inspire Health Researchers as Writers. If you’ve never considered your writing voice, whether you paragraph strategically, or how you approach academic hedging, this is a great place to start.  

Lorelei also shared her thoughts on reading habits (she thinks Margaret Atwood is good, but not great 😊), on writing for social media (check out @LingardLorelei), and on how speaking and writing are connected. She even had the temerity to point out the lack of coherence in one of the questions I asked her in the podcast!

For more on Lorelei’s work on writing, you might like her Academic Medicine Last Page on Story, not Study, and a wonderful talk she gave about coaching writing at a seminar at McGill University.

Season 3 Episode 3: 12 Tips for Inclusive Teaching with Jeremy Amayo

“Increased global attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion necessitates inclusive teaching in health professions education.” The opening line of this article by Jeremy Amayo and team set the scene for a wide ranging discussion of principle and practical strategies to help teachers be more inclusive – in the classroom, in the clinical environment, and in the online learning environment.

We start with a fundamental question to ask ourselves when considering inclusive teaching - “Who is being left out?”. We consider how our health professions learners are increasingly diverse – not only with regard to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, but also underrecognized traits like introversion/ extroversion, organizational habits, preferred learning styles, and reading speed. The 12 tips traverse fundamental principles to simple practical tips.

Jeremy shared some of his current PhD work on failure in health professions education, and how to develop our skills in learning from failure. We finished with a reflection on the writing and publishing process, including the concept of post publication peer review at MedEdPublish.

 

Happy listening.

 

The Harvard Macy Institute Podcast S3 E2: Just in Time Simulation for High Stakes Communication

The Harvard Macy Institute Podcast aims to connect our Harvard Macy Institute community and to develop our interest in health professions education topics and literature. Our podcast is hosted by our Program for Educators in the Health Professions course faculty Victoria Brazil, and will feature interviews with health professions education authors and their research papers.

This episode of the Harvard Macy Institute podcast is a joint release with Simulcast, and we spoke with Laura Rock – a critical care physician about using ‘just in time’ simulation for high stakes communication with patients and families.

Practising communication, with good feedback, helps us get better at our jobs in healthcare. This is especially important for ‘high stakes communication’ (but really is there any other kind 😊). In this episode of the HMI podcast, Vic speaks with Laura Rock about her recent paper: Communication as a High-Stakes Clinical Skill: "Just-in-Time" Simulation and Vicarious Observational Learning to Promote Patient- and Family-Centered Care and to Improve Trainee Skill.

Her key messages are about the power of rehearsal with feedback for better communication, and the need to practice the actual words we will use. We highlight that this approach appropriately elevates the status of communication as a critical skill, along with other procedural skills. Laura describes strategies like the use of scripts, and developing the ‘microskills’ of communication, as well as recognising the fundamental role of recognizing and responding to emotions in both patients and learners.

Laura is a pulmonologist and critical care doctor who works in the intensive care unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston, USA, affiliated with Harvard Medical School. She has a particular interest in communication and teamwork – which she teaches at her own institution and with the Boston based Center for Medical Simulation.

 

The Harvard Macy Institute Podcast S3 E1: Connecting Scholarship to Practice in Health Professions Education with Lara Varpio and Subha Ramani

The Harvard Macy Institute Podcast aims to connect our Harvard Macy Institute community and to develop our interest in health professions education topics and literature. Our podcast is hosted by our Program for Educators in the Health Professions course faculty Victoria Brazil, and will feature interviews with health professions education authors and their research papers.

S3 E1 Podcast features Subha Ramani and Lara Varpio having a conversation about scholarship in health professions education, and how to make this academic work accessible and applicable for educators.

Scholarship in health professions education is often based on paradigms and methodologies unfamiliar to clinician educators. This risks a ‘disconnect’ – where educators may be looking for randomized controlled trials, and scholars are providing theoretical frameworks and thematic analysis!

 

In this episode Lara Varpio and Subha Ramani discuss their scholarly work in health professions education and how they have made that work rigorous and useful to practitioners, while also educating their readers and challenging some positivist norms.

Lara Varpio is Professor, Center for Health Professions Education & Department of Medicine and Associate Director of Research, Center for Health Professions Education at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland. Subha Ramani is Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and an internal medicine physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She is senior faculty with the Harvard Macy Institute.

We had an interesting discussion on the cultural contexts in which this scholarship is placed and look forward to more ‘bidirectional’ influence of non-Western perspectives on knowledge and ‘ways of knowing.’ Subha and Lara provided excellent advice to those early in their scholarship journey – being clear on goals, engaging in scholarship for the right reasons and the importance of collaboration. Many thanks to them for their time and expertise!

 

Watch out for new episodes this year which will be announced on our blog and our Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook social media channels.

 

Did you know that the Harvard Macy Institute Community Blog has had more than 285 posts? Previous blog posts have explored topics including developing leaders for healthcare and education, leading curricular change, and systems of assessment in educational settings.

 

Author BIO

Victoria Brazil, MD (Educators, ’05, Leaders ’07, Assessment ‘10) is Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of Simulation at Bond University Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine. Her research interests include podcasting and simulation, and she is co-producer of Simulcast - a podcast about healthcare simulation. Victoria can be followed on Twitter.