Transformational Times
Words of Hope, Character & Resilience from our Virtual Community
Friday, October 2, 2020
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In this Issue:
Director's Corner
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Adina Kalet, MD, MPH: The Truth About Trust
Perspectives/Opinions
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Libby Ellinas, MD: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Losing a Brilliant Voice for Equity
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Wendy Peltier, MD: Quick Takes from IHER 2020
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Eileen Peterson and Anna Visser: First- and Second-Year Medical Students’ Responses to Remote Learning
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Ilya Avdeev, PhD: An Invitation to Reimagine Medical Education: Before Thinking Outside the Box, Think About the Box
Poetry Corner
Your Turn
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See how readers answered last week's prompt: How do you unwind after a long week of work and school?
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Respond to this week's prompt: What is your favorite hot beverage to warm up with?
Announcements & Resources
- Register for the Kern Institute's Upcoming Virtual Events
- Kern National Network Connections Newsletter - October 2020
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Director's Corner
The Truth About Trust
by Adina Kalet, MD, MPH
In this Director’s Corner, Dr. Kalet considers the importance and complexity of trust in medical education and encourages us to hone our judgement and have courage …
Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted with large ones either.
-Albert Einstein
The first presidential debate this week has me thinking about the consequences of not being able to trust someone on whom you depend. We rely on our elected officials, like our physicians, to listen, have empathy, engage in respectful - even if sometimes - heated disagreements, make good judgements in very complex situations, have control over intense emotions and, most importantly, consistently tell the truth. To “trust someone” implies that we have confidence in that person, and believe that the individual will be capable, adaptable, and competent now and in the future – even when faced with novel, rapidly evolving circumstances, emotional and physical stressors, and unpredictable challenges.
While always in the background, trust (“entrustment” and “trustworthiness”) has moved to the forefront in the medical education. How we make these trust judgements in medical education – and in life – is worth a hard look.
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Perspective & Opinion
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Losing a Brilliant Voice for Equity
by Libby Ellinas, MD – Director of the MCW Center for the Advancement of Women in Science and Medicine (AWSM)
Dr. Ellinas shares her perspective on the loss of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at precisely the time when our country needs her most of all ...
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020. It felt like a punch in the gut. A wave of loss and a fear for our nation’s future. It brought again to mind a deep concern for the health, safety, and opportunities for women in the United States.
This week, the police officer who shot and killed Breonna Taylor was not indicted. That decision brought about a wave of loss and fear for the health, safety, and opportunities for women in the United States. In the faces of my colleagues, I could see that loss, that emotion.
Justice Ginsburg’s loss was personally devastating to me, not only because she was a superb intellect and a dauntingly hard worker (two traits I admire in anyone), but because she was clever – ingenious even – at helping colleagues and justices gain insight into their own views.
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Educational Perspective
Quick Takes from IHER 2020
by Wendy Peltier, MD – Co-Editor of the MCW Kern Institute's Transformational Times
One hundred and sixty-one registrants joined the first virtual MCW Innovations in Healthcare Research Conference last week Thursday and Friday. Dr. Peltier shares her own perspective, as well as impressions from some of the conference presenters and organizers …
If someone had told me a year ago that I would be presenting a voice-over IGNITE presentation in an all-virtual format, I would have flipped. Not being part of the tech-saavy generation, the added skills and anxieties that come with engaging this format can be intimidating. In reality, I was pleasantly surprised, and inspired, by joining fellow presenters and colleagues in the Zoom world through IHER, focused this year on Professional Identify Formation.
Dr. Monson helped us to understand Professional Identity Formation on a deeper level, through her perspectives in work on Professionalism Remediation. There are many links between this work and the Kern Institute mission of transforming medical education around caring and character. The buzz in the chat room was loudest during this session, which also allowed for small group breakout sessions.
The multiple and varied session platforms made for a very dynamic conference, with topics ranging from use of Medical Improv, to combating bias, to use of Med Moth storytelling to promote connection and inclusivity on campus. There was a major focus in promoting, and teaching, empathy in our learners.
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Educational Perspective
First- and Second-Year Medical Students’ Responses to Remote Learning
by Eileen Peterson and Anna Visser
MCW Students Eileen Peterson and Anna Visser organized a student survey to better understand how their colleagues adjusted to the remote learning environment, and lessons learned moving forward that can connect to well-being efforts …
While online degree programs have existed for decades, they made up a small minority of degree programs in the United States until 2020, when remote learning became the norm, forcing students and faculty members to adapt to its benefits and challenges.
The Medical College of Wisconsin was just one of the many institutions affected once the threat of disease spread materialized during the spring semester of this past academic year. In-person lectures for first- and second-year medical students (M1s and M2s, respectively) stopped for the rest of the spring semester, and third- and fourth-year medical students were pulled from the clinics and hospitals during their rotations. As we all learned more about COVID-19 and how to safely bring students back to campus, things have slowly shifted to a “new normal.” The third- and fourth-year students were allowed back at their rotations. However, the path to this “new normal” has been a bit rockier for first- and second-year medical students.
As the first- and second-year medical school curriculum is largely lecture-based, many changes have had to occur to transition to mostly-virtual learning.
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Educational Perspective
An Invitation to Reimagine Medical Education: Before Thinking Outside the Box, Think About the Box
by Ilya Avdeev, PhD – Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, UWM
Dr. Avdeev, a member of the Kern Institute’s Human-Centered Design Innovator’s Lab, describes a way of thinking that can unleash your creativity and big ideas ...
Transformation of something as established and complicated as medical education definitely qualities as a “wicked problem.” It is endlessly complex, with incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that make problem and solution identification very challenging. And yet we try. Like many of my colleagues in the MCW Kern Institute, I feel pressure to come up with bold “outside the box” ideas. The kinds of ideas that are leaps forward rather than small incremental improvements. Google calls these ideas “moonshots.” There are a number of tactics to enhancing the quantity and the quality of ideas. Here, we will assume that higher quality correlates with higher degree of transformation.
When it comes to the quantity of ideas, embracing problem constraints encourages the flow of creative ideas. With students in design classes, we often use artificial constraints that are not even related to the project in order to help them to get “unstuck” during ideation. In academia, there are plenty of real constraints that you might want to embrace: limited budgets, approval of committees and gatekeepers, buy-in of faculty and students, etc.
Constraints are explicit. They are well-understood. They are important components of the proverbial box that we want to think outside of.
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This week's poem was submitted by Dr. Kathlyn Fletcher.
Heavy was published in 2007 as a part of Mary Oliver’s compilation of poems entitled Thirst. Dr. Fletcher shares:
“In her poem Heavy, Mary Oliver speaks simply of being consumed by despair. She describes a feeling so raw that the reader can feel the aching. Through the counsel of a friend, she begins to recapture moments of happiness. He reminds her of her own agency in how she carries her grief. He does not demand that she give it up before it has run its course, but rather gently suggests that she reconsider how she lives with it. Can we be the friends who bear witness to grief without hurrying it away?”
Heavy
by Mary Oliver
That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,
as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry
but how you carry it –
books, bricks, grief –
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?
Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?
How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled –
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves, a love
to which there is no reply?
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"My favorite way to unwind is to wake up on Saturday morning, put on some music and water my plants. I love watching my dog sunbathing in the light streaming through the windows (see photo), and watching my partner slowly wake up as he enjoys his second cup of coffee."
"Watering my plants is my time to be quiet and reflect on the week. Observing the subtle growth in my plants from week to week reminds me to reflect on my own growth that week."
-Danielle Olsen, Medical Student
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"Yoga! I used to have this notion I would not be good enough for yoga because I never did ballet or gymnastics, and all the other excuses I created. My college roommate was an instructor and more or less dragged me to her classes, and I became hooked. I love it because it doesn't judge me when I topple over, when my hands don't flatten against the floor in my forward fold, or when my breath doesn't match the instructor's cadence."
"Since starting clinicals, my schedule is no longer "mine" and I found going to class challenging. My fiance helped me turn our living room into a little studio, lavender diffuser and all (see photo). I look forward to unwinding and practicing with whomever we decide to stream."
-Anonymous, Medical Student
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"I unwind by going to the dog park or taking a long walk with my dog ... followed by some serious cuddle time!"
-Laura Grogan, Medical Student
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Respond to next week's reflection prompt:
What is your favorite hot beverage to warm up with?
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Transformational Ideas Initiative
MCW Education Innovation Celebration!
Please join us in celebrating innovative ideas for the transformation of medical education at MCW!
Learn about the 15 projects being implemented this academic year and how you can join us as we transform medical education here at MCW! Thirteen of our projects focus on URM student inclusion, and 8 projects are student-led this year.
Join us on the journey to transform medical education!
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October 14, 2020
Live Virtual Presentation
4:00 - 6:00 pm CT
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Kern Connection Cafe Presentation
Student Activism & Advocacy in Action
Advocacy is needed more than ever to address systemic racism, social determinants of health, and the health disparities that vulnerable populations face. Please join us for a panel presentation by MCW students Christian Hernandez, Sherrea Jones, and Jonathan Horng.
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October 15, 2020
Live Virtual Presentation
4:00 - 5:00 pm CT
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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.
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November 18, 2020
Live Virtual Presentation
9:00 - 10:00 am CT
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The Kern National Network
Click anywhere on the image for the KNN's September 2020 Newsletter
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Our Patients Need Your Blood! |
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The pandemic has changed so much about our day-to-day lives, but it certainly hasn’t changed the need for life-saving blood products for our seriously ill patients.
Current supplies are limited, which impacts our patients with cancer, chronic anemia, and solid organ transplants.
Give the gift of hope. Our patients need you today!
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MCW COVID-19 Resource Center |
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The Transformational Times publishes weekly, delivering stories of hope, character and resilience to our virtual community. |
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Editorial Board: Kathlyn Fletcher, MD, Adina Kalet, MD, Wendy Peltier, MD, Julia Schmitt, Olivia Davies, Scott Lamm, Eileen Peterson, Sarah Torres, & Anna Visser
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