Transformational Times
Words of Hope, Character & Resilience from our Virtual Community
Friday, October 16, 2020
In this Issue:

Director's Corner
  • Olivia Davies and Adina Kalet, MD, MPH: The Failure Effect: Why We Should Share our "Failure Stories" in Medical Education

Perspectives/Opinions
  • Paul Bergl, MD: Kern Grand Rounds Preview: The Emotional Toll of Being a Health Care Provider During a Global Pandemic
  • Jeff Fritz, PhD: 2019 MCW Professionalism Enrichment Award Winner, Reflections on Professionalism
  • Cassie Ferguson, MD: 2018 MCW Professionalism Enrichment Award Winner, Reflections on Professionalism
  • Megan Quamme: Registering New Voters in the Emergency Department: A Virtual Session with Dr. Alister Martin from VotER

Take 3
  • Verna Monson, PhD: MCW IHER Conference Plenary Presenter

Poetry Corner
  • Ben Ferguson: Poem for Mom

Your Turn
  • See how readers answered last week's prompt: Who do you want to give a shout-out to this week, and why?
  • Respond to this week's prompt: What's your favorite Wisconsin place to take in the peak Autumn colors?
  • Respond to this week's character question: How do you balance being honest with being kind?

Announcements & Resources
  • Register for the Kern Institute's Upcoming Virtual Events
  • Kern National Network Connections Newsletter - October 2020
Director's Corner
The Failure Effect: Why We Should Share our "Failure Stories" in Medical Education


by Olivia Davies and Adina Kalet, MD, MPH

For this week’s Director's Corner, Dr. Kalet invited Olivia Davies (MCW-Milwaukee Class of 2021) to co-write this piece on the critical importance of failure to learning and introduce The MCW Kern Fail Forward Initiative...


As you read this, I (Olivia) am sitting in a testing center taking my USMLE Step 2 board exam – one of the many hoops through which students are asked to jump gracefully. But the truth is, we don’t always make it through the hoops the first time, sometimes not even the second. It feels like a long time has passed since I received the score from my first MCAT exam (a 27 by the old metric), and yet it’s also so personally recent. That application year, I was not accepted to medical school. In fact, it would be another three years before I received a solitary acceptance from the Medical College of Wisconsin. I tell you this because I was certain I was the only person who ever had to retake the MCAT or who ever had to reapply to medical school, when the truth is, I’m not.

In medical school, success is expected. Medical students, when they struggle — as all do at some point — experience failure in isolation. Classmates seemingly face no setbacks; struggles are stifled, shameful even.

Educational theorists emphasize the importance of working in groups to enhance learning, yet medical students who “fail” often struggle alone. This façade, perpetuated and upheld by our culture of perfectionism, creates a deafening silence for those who trip and stumble.
Kern Grand Rounds Preview
The Emotional Toll of Being a Health Care Provider During a Global Pandemic

by Paul Bergl, MD


Dr. Bergl will be part of a Grand Rounds panel discussion sponsored by the Kern Institute during MCW’s Professionalism Week. The presentation will be held virtually on Thursday, October 22nd from 9:00 - 10:00am CT. 
When I was asked to contribute a written reflection on the emotional toll that COVID-19 has had on healthcare workers, my first reaction was - and still is - genuine fear. Fear that any public emoting would come off as disingenuous or hyperbolized for rhetorical effect. Fear that I would come off as whiny, as weak, as lacking resilience. Fear that I had little to offer and nothing particularly novel to say about a pandemic that has been covered from every last angle. Most importantly, fear that, as a gainfully employed and financially comfortable white man, I might leave others wondering, “He thinks he has a reason to feel burned out?” 

In this loosely chronological reflection, I do not assume that I have captured the sentiments of many of my colleagues; instead, I only offer my own. And I hope that I have made evident my sincere sympathy for those suffering greatly from the fallout of COVID-19 and my perpetual gratitude for those working even harder than I. 
Perspective
My Reflections on Professionalism

by Jeff Fritz, PhD – Winner, 2019 MCW Professionalism Enrichment Award



When I think about professionalism, three topics come to mind: personalities, people, and practices.

Professionalism and Personalities

If you could talk to anyone from the past who would it be? Each time I find myself posed with this question a long list of people come to mind. When pressed by those around me to select just one person, I usually find myself selecting someone that could guide me in my personal challenges that I’m facing in that moment.

In the area of professionalism that person would be Sir William Osler. Dr. Osler was on the forefront in many areas of medical education. Before there was a Flexner Report, he encouraged integration of foundational scientific knowledge with clinical practice (Osler is one of the founders of medical student learning knowledge and practice skills by the patient’s bedside); he encouraged nurses and physicians to be trained together (an early forerunner of Inter-Professional Education or IPE); he was a vocal advocate for the advancement of women in medicine; and he was passionate about physicians embracing their role to ease human suffering with a concept he termed Aequanimitas.
Perspective
My Reflections on Professionalism

by Cassie Ferguson, MD – Winner, 2018 MCW Professionalism Enrichment Award


I have never been inspired by the word “professionalism,” certainly not by how it is typically interpreted. It calls to mind people in suits, confidently shaking hands across a long board room table. While in academic medicine we may describe it more heroically, I would argue that we assess professionalism in our students, trainees, and faculty in a similarly uninspired fashion: Did you attend lecture? Did you show up on time to clinic? Did you wear the “right” clothes? Did you finish your Epic notes?

Our professionalism might be judged by our behaviors, actions, attitudes, and in how closely we conform to an organization’s code of conduct, but I’ve always believed that these outward displays matter less than the intentions behind them. Those people in my life from whom I have learned the most about professionalism in medicine are those who acted altruistically; not out of a sense of duty or with a disregard for their own health or well-being, but rather out of a deeply felt connection and a true sense of belonging to their patients, colleagues, and community.
Grand Rounds Wrap-Up
Registering New Voters in the Emergency Department: A Virtual Session with Dr. Alister Martin from VotER

by Megan Quamme, MCW-Milwaukee Medical Student


Megan Quamme summarizes the October 29th Grand Rounds presentation by Dr. Alister Martin, Executive Director of VotER. Have you registered to vote? Go to the Wisconsin Elections Commission site here.…

“Are you registered to vote? Would you like to do that while you are here today?” These are two questions that physicians can ask every patient, according to Dr. Alister Martin, an emergency medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and founder of VotER.

Dr. Martin started the non-partisan organization VotER to make it easier for his patients to register. He first had this idea as a resident working in the Pediatric ED. Dr. Martin was caring for two pediatric patients who had come into the Emergency Department with their mother because they were homeless, new to the area, and living in a car. When trying to get the family shelter for the night, Dr. Martin learned from a social worker that the patients’ mother would only be eligible for a spot at a homeless shelter if she could claim residency in the state. The easiest and fastest way to claim residency was by registering to vote. Dr. Martin had never realized that physicians could register patients to vote at the hospital. 
Verna E. Monson, PhD
 
Dr. Monson has a PhD in Educational Psychology and currently serves as an affiliate professor for the MCW Kern Institute. She has keen interest and experience in professional identity formation and ethics education for medical students. Wendy Peltier, MD, co-editor of the Transformational Times, had the chance to speak with Dr. Monson and posed these three questions …


1. We so appreciated your plenary session at the recent IHER conference. What surprised you most about participating?
 
"I was surprised to hear from [Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education and Associate Provost of Education] Dean William Hueston that creativity is emphasized at MCW. Although I think of medicine as both science and art, I do hold some bias that creativity is antithetical to science, and that must be bad, or even, and ethically questionable (as in "creative accounting?"). In my 30 years of working in higher education, I don't remember hearing Deans talk about the importance of creativity. So, it was a delightful surprise. I think creativity feeds the human soul and fuels persistence to keep working on tough problems. With creativity, work becomes more like play. Novel solutions to old problems are generated. New treatment approaches to tough medical problems are devised and tested. Educators imagine how they spark creativity and passion in learners. Maybe this era we are living through needs more creativity. Yes, we need science. But maybe we also need more imagination to help figure out how we can bridge across differences that seem insurmountable right now and inspire a new generation of healers and leaders. I look forward to participating in that process and am energized by the idea that creativity is important to medical education."
 
2. What is the most important thing for medical educators to know about Professional Identify Formation?
 
"I want medical educators to see Professional Identity Formation as a framework that reminds us that we are human beings first, and that we must tend to our inner lives by continually defining and refining what has meaning to us as physicians and what has purpose. PIF reminds us to tend to ourselves so we can tend to others. It reminds us that it is up to us to choose what is important to us and what our purpose is as physicians. I think of it as a process of becoming more and more intentional, of becoming true to yourself. PIF is reflecting on how we came to value what we value, and whether our intentions line up with our actions. Professional Identity Formation sometimes involves asking difficult questions of oneself, e.g., "How did I come to embrace those values or beliefs? or How can I act upon my values?" Seen in that light, it's about developing character and integrity. But it is also about competence and compassion, and when all of those qualities align, the result is increased effectiveness as physicians, as leaders, and improving our own well-being. I believe that it is a well-developed PIF that will prepare tomorrow's physician-leaders to address tough issues in medicine, such as disparities in access to healthcare and healthcare outcomes."
 
3. What are you looking forward to in your collaborations with the MCW Kern Institute?
 
"I love that the mission of the Kern Institute is explicitly about innovation in medical education. And I look forward to being a learner myself! I want to learn about the community at MCW and deepen my understanding of how both learners and educators view professional identity formation. I also look forward to the chance to contribute to the research and scholarship on professional identity formation that Kern's Director, Dr. Adina Kalet, MD MPH, launched over the past decade. I am humbled and grateful for this opportunity."
 
 
Wendy Peltier, MD is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Section Head of the Palliative Care Center in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at MCW. She is a member of the Faculty Pillar of the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education.
This week we are very excited to feature a poem by Ben Ferguson. Ben is 12 years old and is in the 8th grade at Whitefish Bay Middle School. He is the oldest of three boys and loves snowboarding and writing scripts for his animated series. His parents met during their first year at the Medical College of Wisconsin; his mom, Cassie, is a pediatric emergency medicine physician at MCW and his dad, Brad, is a radiologist at Advocate Aurora.

This poem was part of an assignment for his English Language Arts class. Ben says that while he was writing it, “I thought about how I was struggling with my schoolwork at the time and was thinking about how hard it was for me, and then I realized that it was my mom who was helping everyone through everything. It made me realize that everyone has something they’re struggling with.”



Poem for Mom
by Ben Ferguson



I dreamed of work, a big pile of to-dos.
Seemingly never ending, it simply didn’t stop.
I felt I was myself, but something was slightly off. 
I wasn’t in school, I was somewhere else
Cold, bright, stress, worry, hinting that this 
Wasn’t me
But someone else it could be.
I looked down, a suffering patient
Asking, pleading, “Help.”
I looked back, debating whether or not to leave,
But back was more work.
Then I realized, this isn’t me.
It’s my hard-working
Dedicated
Amazing
Mom



Know someone who writes poetry? Write poems yourself?
Have a favorite poem you’d like to share? Send your submissions to odavies@mcw.edu and slamm@mcw.edu


Sherrea Jones and British Fields who are Co-Presidents of MCW WC4BL. They are incredible and inspiring leaders!
– Laura Grogan, Milwaukee Medical Student



All the M1s and M2s! Virtual medical school is hard and you are all doing impressive things!
-Anonymous, Student



The custodial staff who make MCW a safe, hospitable space for learning.
– Anonymous, Student



Respond to next week's reflection prompt:


What's your favorite Wisconsin place to take in the peak autumn colors?
Kern Connection Cafe Discussion

LGBTQ Care: How National Decisions Affect Local Care

Please join us for a virtual Connections Cafe with Andrew Petroll, MD, MS, Medical Director of the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin Inclusion Health Clinic and Jessica Francis, MD, OB/GYN, Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin.

As our medical system continues to be tested by the current pandemic and resource shortages, we must stay vigilant in providing care to our marginalized populations. Changes we see at a national level affect our ability to provide care at a local level. As we continue to evolve through these challenging times, we will discuss how we can provide optimal care under suboptimal circumstances. 
November 12, 2020
Live Virtual Presentation
4:00 - 5:00 pm CT
Dan Hunt MD
Kern Grand Rounds Presentation

Creating Physicians Where a Medical School Should Not Exist

Please join us for a virtual Grand Rounds presentation with Dan Hunt, MD, MBA, Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) field secretary and Secretary Emeritus.

In this time of so many moving parts in medical education, be they the changes in USMLE scoring or increased on-line learning, we must ask ourselves how we can use these situations to maximize our graduates’ skills and likelihood of addressing society’s health care inequities. Having been on both sides of the table, both defending a school's innovative curriculum to the LCME and then later being the LCME reviewer for many, if not most, of the new schools across the US and Canada, there are lessons to be shared on how to let the LCME standards guide rather than obstruct creativity.
November 18, 2020
Live Virtual Presentation
9:00 - 10:00 am CT
The Kern National Network
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MCW COVID-19 Resource Center
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