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. 

Season 2, Episode 4 features Harvard Macy Institute Leading Innovations in Health Care and Education course directors Liz Armstrong, Derek van Bever and Josh Nagler, together with 2020 scholars Tanya Holt and Tanya Horsley, reflection on the why, what and how of developing leaders for 21^st century education and healthcare.           

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We are experiencing rapid and fundamental change in the ways healthcare and health professions education are delivered, and in the social, political, and financial environment in which they exist. In this podcast, Victoria Brazil speaks with Josh Nagler about the need for leadership during times of change, and the ways we can develop leaders from across the career spectrum. We draw on the wisdom of HMI Leading Innovations in Healthcare and Education co-directors Derek van Bever and Liz Armstrong in reflecting on the critical need for innovation and change in healthcare, the translational of leadership theory to practice, and the use of case studies in leadership development. They emphasize the importance of creating a psychologically safe environment where learners can take risks as critical leadership development steps, and describe how the theory of disruptive innovation continues to shape their approach to guiding others to lead change.

The podcast also features the voices of two scholars from the 2020 Leading Innovations in Health Care and Education program – Tanya Horsley and Tanya Holt – who describe this developmental process from a scholars viewpoint, and their experience of becoming part of a community of practice within the Harvard Macy Institute.

That this past summer the Baystate Health WOW (Wellness on Wheels) bus, our mobile healthcare effort, rolled out into the community during the national crisis seems antithetic to our current context of virtual learning and social distance. As the pandemic hit underserved communities of black and Latinx residents in Western Massachusetts, the privilege of a planning period for the mobile classroom was replaced with an urgency to intervene.

Shrouded in tradition and long held symbol of prestige in academia, the Visiting Professorship has arguably lost its original purpose of furthering education, and rather has remained a vestige of academic notoriety and fodder for promotion. As such, and in particular in the setting of economic hardships, the Visiting Professorship has been diminishing in popularity, with the few major academic radiology programs who host Visiting Professors reporting hosting just a handful per year. However, the educational advantages of a lecture or a didactic case conference by physician subject experts from different institutions have been long documented and are in particular advantageous in a rapidly evolving field such as radiology. Thus, as the pandemic upended medical education everywhere and radiology case volumes have drastically dropped which significantly decreased radiology residents’ educational opportunities we sought to leverage the increasing widespread utilization of videoconferencing and reinvented Visiting Professorship in a virtual format. 

The beginning of the COVID-19 surge indicated that we could not safely see our pediatric patients in the office. But patients still needed us either for sick visits, issues related to population health, or reassurance. We could not abandon them. Within the scope of 24-48 hours, we as clinicians were training ourselves on how to teach patients how to connect to MyChart, and use Zoom for telemedicine. At the same time, we were learning how to conduct histories and physicals using telemedicine. Our neuronal connections likely grew exponentially! Soon, we found ways to educate the younger generation, to bring them along this adventure into uncharted territories full of seemingly unsurmountable difficulties which we soon learned to overcome.

Take one minute to think about the first time you realized you mattered as an educator. What happened? How did you feel?

Whether it was an action from organizational leadership taken in your favor, an encouraging word spoken over you by a student, or an object that represented deep meaning to efforts, you experienced the power of mattering: you felt valued and knew you added value.