Vice Chair of Education

An update from the Office of the Vice Chair of Education

With recruitment season winding down for the DOM fellowships and gearing up full speed for the DOM residency programs, there is much to celebrate!

What an incredible first academic quarter it has been learning more about the Department of Medicine training programs and their outstanding program leaders and educators! The DOM residency and fellowship program directors and coordinators continue to impress at our monthly meetings where we share best practices, problem-solve, share updates, celebrate education, look for opportunities for shared scholarship, and build community. Our most recent report out was from the Oncology fellowship with many celebrations, lessons learned, and innovations to share. We are looking forward to hearing from the Cardiology fellowship program at our next meeting.

Being on the inpatient teaching Firm for the first time since starting at WashU, I have truly been able to see firsthand the exceptional clinical skills of our DOM subspecialty fellows, IM and dermatology residents, and rotating medical students. Wow! Our patients are truly in terrific hands; our learners are clearly being developed and taught by the best of the best in medical education. It is truly an honor to be a part of the DOM Medical Education community.

We will be spotlighting different DOM training programs with each newsletter. Some exciting DOM educator and trainee accomplishments to highlight this quarter include:

Please join us in congratulating the following DOM Educators on their National Education Workshop Acceptances

Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine (AAIM) Workshop Acceptances
  • B. Millar: “Burnout and Boundaries – How to reclaim your job”
  • B. Millar: “Career-Making Conversations – What, How, and When to Speak Up”
  • J. Byington and K. Sidler*: “Tapping Into Your Leadership Potential: How To Be the Coordinator You Know You Can Be”
  • Julie Byington: “Using Technology to Your Advantage – Part 1”
  • Justin Chen: “Innovative Approaches to Teaching Quality Improvement and Patient Safety. Perspectives from four institutions”
  • Patricia Kao: “When Implicit Bias Undermines Inter-professional Teamwork: A Step-by-Step Framework to Promote a More Inclusive Clinical Learning Environment”
  • Nathan Nolan, Lisa Zickuhr, Frank O’Brien, Andrew Robinson: A Novel Approach to Integrating Health Equity Education into Graduate Medical Training Programs”
  • Maria Baggstrom, Koeun Lee, Lydia Zhong, Abby Spencer, Rakhee Bhayani:  “Stronger Together: Forming a Women in Medicine program for women trainees”
  • Abby Spencer “Leading an Effective Meeting” Part of  “All About Me Precourse”
  • Dominique Cosco: Enhancing Resilience: Time Management Skills. Part of  “All About Me Precourse”
  • Bethany Miller, Abby Spencer, Dominique Cosco: “Elevate Your Team: Optimizing the PD/PA Relationship”
  • Rakhee Bhayani “Pay it Forward with Effective, Efficient, Evaluative Letter for Promotion or Recommendation”

It’s especially exciting that many of our presenters are first time submitters and first time presenters!

AAIM Leadership
  • Patricia Kao – Survey Committee
  • Dominque Cosco – Chair, Program Planning Committee
  • Julie Byington — AAIM UME-GME Task Force on ERAS Filters
ACGME Conference
  • B. Millar and L. Bell: Career-Making Conversations – What, How, and When to Speak Up
AAMC Conference: Academies Collaborative
  • Abby Spencer and Michelle Miller – Thomas “Introducing the Academy Awards…”
  • Dominique Cosco and Abby Spencer “Adaptive Innovations to Maintain Engagement during Covid”
  • Poster Presentation: Andrea Soares [graduated resident, now cardiology fellow at UC Davis], Angela Fink, Justin Chen, Arghavan Salles, Rakhee Bhayani, Patricia Kao. “The Association of Mindset, Gender, and Stereotype Threat in Internal Medicine Residents”
Society for General Internal Medicine Workshop Presentations and Leadership
  • Dominique Cosco – Building your Educator Portfolio 
  • Amber Deptola, Rakhee Bhayani- Mission Driven and More: Integrating Meaning into Career Planning
  • Abby Spencer: Accelerating your Academic Promotion as a Clinician Educator
  • Dominique Cosco – TEACH faculty and director
  • Abby Spencer – LEAD faculty
  • Jenny Schmidt – Immediate Past President of Midwest SGIM
Key Educational Publications
Trainee Celebrations
  • Kelly McDermott: PGY 2, IM Resident won the Best Clinical Vignette as the Midwest SGIM meeting
  • Felix Nguyen: PGY 3, IM Resident won 1st place in the Research category for the resident competition at the Missouri ACP meeting
  • Fred Brown: PGY 3, IM Resident won the Young Investigator Award at the national American Heart Association (AHA) meeting
  • Hematology/Oncology Fellowship celebrates their fellows listed below for the  acceptance of their presentations at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium  (SABCS) and the American Society of Hematology (ASH) National Meeting.
  • Gayathri Krishnan: Selected to serve a three-year term on the 2021 IDSA Fellows Subcommittee

    Congratulations to:
    • David Russler – Germain. All three of his IIS proposals have been formally approved.
    • Michael Kramer – accepted poster presentation for ASH – “Analysis of the Proteomes of Primary, De Novo Acute Myeloid Leukemia Cells from Adults.”
    • Raya Saba – accepted abstract, oral & poster presentation for ASH.
    • Jing Xi – Abstract accepted by San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium
    • Whitney Hensing – Coltman Scholars Award to support attendance to the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium and had Three Poster Presentations accepted.  Whitney also received the 2021 Conquer Cancer Young Investigator Award (YIA). 

News You Can Use

Building Trust DEI Grants Program Opens Call for Letters of Intent

AAIM, ABIM, the ABIM Foundation, ACP, and the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation are pleased to announce the opening of the 2022 Building Trust through Diversity, Health Care Equity, & Inclusion in Internal Medicine Training grant program. A total of $400,000 in grants will be available to internal medicine residents and faculty members to support new or existing programs that promote trust and create a more equitable health system by incorporating DEI into the fabric of internal medicine education and training. Programs that advance interprofessional approaches incorporating members from across the care team will be preferred. Letters of intent are due December 1.

AAIM Guidance for Equity in IM Grading

Faculty/Resident Supervisor Development Provide best practices for writing specific, behaviorally-based narrative assessments that include students’ strengths and areas for improvement. This should also include education on inequities in language use by gender and race. Examples of inequities in language:

Change gender-influenced language – “She was a treat to have on the general medicine service” to behaviorally-based language, “Her written and oral presentations were thorough, she was responsive to patients, and her interactions with staff were always professional.”

Change personality-focused language – “As is common in his culture, he was quiet and studious”- to behaviorally-based language “During rounds, when prompted his responses to direct questions about patient care reflected that he had done extensive reading about his patients.”

Gender bias tool calculators for narratives are available on the internet (e.g., https://www.tomforth.co.uk/genderbias/)

Mary Klingensmith, MD (left), Founding Director of the Academy of Educators with Abby Spencer, MD, MS, FACP, current Director, Academy of Educators.

On the heels of an outstanding 2021 Academy of Educators Education Day, please see our DOM news post including all of our DOM new Academy Inductees, DOM award winners, and DOM Honor Roll Nominees! See our website Academy of Educators | Office of Education (wustl.edu) to learn more about Academy membership, certificate programs, awards, upcoming workshops, educational small grants, and more.

The DOM offices of Education, Faculty Development and Health Equity recently hosted a workshop and panel discussion on Constructing Letters of Recommendation for Trainees – Mitigating bias in Letters of Recommendation.  The audio-recording and resources for this session can be found in Box. We will be hosting future sessions on preparing and presenting workshops on scholarship, getting promoted as a Clinician Educator, and delivering effective feedback.