At the onset of the pandemic in New York City, our medium sized midtown hospital exhausted our meager stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) faster than a forest fires ravages. One reason briskly identified was the failure to cohort COVID-19 patients on a single floor. The other more important cause was that medicine teams in our hospital have patients scattered throughout the hospital in a non geographic model across 4 different floors. Within 2 weeks, administration and hospital medicine leadership developed a geographic model. We started cohorting all COVID-19 positive patients on separate floors from negative patients. A geographic physician team model was also developed, which allowed physicians and nurses to don and doff at the entry and exit of each COVID-19 unit. 

Not all who wander are lost…but many of us are. How often have you wandered through a day unaware of your own physical and emotional presence as you walk from one patient to the next? Take it a step further – how often have you cared for “another (insert common diagnosis) patient” with a checklist of management protocols? How often have you felt on the verge of burnout?

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.

Podcast #14 features HMI faculty member Martin Pusic, in a discussion about artificial intelligence (AI), big data, analytics and algorithms – and how they might transform healthcare and health professions education        

Whether through an official faculty development training or informal feedback from a colleague, you have probably been told about the importance of communication in health professions education more times than you can count. Given the current, and likely future, emphasis on online learning, communication with students is more important than ever before. But what exactly is meant by “communication” and, more importantly, how do we use it to positively influence student learning in an online environment? Let’s take a look at the different types of communication needed in online learning and how to make it an asset in your program:

Many of you have faculty responsibilities that include evaluating trainees of different levels, specifically undergraduate and graduate medical education. These assessments are often used as the foundation for both formative and summative feedback and play an important role in determining medical competence. As the goal of any training program is to graduate professionals who can provide high quality patient care, it is of upmost importance that assessments are accurate, informative and truly reflective of a trainee’s performance. The implications of inaccurate assessments can potentially have real world repercussions, namely effects upon patient outcomes. There is evidence to support that gaps in clinical performance can persist into independent practice and speak to the quality of training received. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that training programs must trust that assessments submitted by faculty are precise to the greatest extent possible.