The Transformational Times has a Birthday and I have an Insight

From the 3/12/2021 newsletter

Editor’s Corner

 

The Transformational Times has a Birthday and I have an Insight

 

Bruce H. Campbell, MD FACS

 

In this Anniversary Issue, we reprint some of the most important and popular essays published during the first year of the Transformational Times. Dr. Campbell, Editor in Chief of the newsletter, reflects back on its origins in March 2020 and believes it will offer a blueprint for the transformation of medical education and the culture of medicine for the coming generation …

 

This newsletter has been around for one year. Safe to say, more than a few things have changed over the months.

In March 2020, in-person classes were being cancelled, medical students were being sent home from their clinical rotations, and the pandemic was starting to become real. On March 16, Dr. Adina Kalet, Director the Kern Institute, presented her vision for a weekly email that would offer support and information to MCW and the wider community. She invited several of us to address a variety of topics, asking us how we might:  

• Keep students connected now that they had been forced off-campus
• Understand what Caring and Character look like during a public health emergency
• Explore how faculty and staff are affected by the ethical issues inherent in balancing work, coronavirus exposure, family upheaval, PPE shortages, and child rearing
• Support the “worried well”
• See how the pandemic might reactivate old wounds
• Find ways to best engage our audience
• Discover what “transformation” looks like when everything is disrupted, and how we should take advantage of this disruption to reinvigorate medical education

We had no idea how to tackle Dr. Kalet’s challenge. On top of it, we all had day jobs and none of us had ever attempted to mount a weekly newsletter. Would we take on the challenge? Sure, we said. What could possibly go wrong?

So, the Transformational Times was born. That Monday meeting led to a newsletter the following Friday. And every Friday since.

 

What we brought to the Transformational Times

We experimented. We learned. We pledged to keep the content relevant, surprising, honest, and edgy. We started this blog to archive many of the essays. Over the subsequent months, we expanded our efforts:

• We requested essays and poetry that addressed reactions to George Floyd’s death, shining lights on systemic racism and the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement.
• We offered platforms for voices we believed were not widely amplified, including students, residents, staff, nurses, persons of color, women, persons identifying as LGBTQ+, and native Americans.
• We published pieces that offered clarity even as polarization threatened the fabric of democracy.
• We included first-person struggles with failure, stigma, mental health issues, and burnout.
• We celebrated the service of military veterans.
• We brought in voices from the regional campuses.
• We added student associate editors to recruit writers, develop poetry and visual arts columns, create content, and be social media experts.

In the process, we aggressively began including the projects and missions of the Kern Institute. The institute’s thought leaders, program participants, and consultants shared insights on many topics, including visual thinking strategies, remediation, medical education transformation, entrepreneurial mindset, entrustable professional activities, educational measurement science, mentorship, mattering, practical wisdom, and professionalism.

Overwhelmingly busy people create our content, and we have been gratified by their willingness to share stories on deadline. We are also very grateful to our readers; of the 6000 who receive this email every Friday morning, over 30% open one or more of the articles. We appreciate the feedback, as well.

 

What the Transformational Times has taught me

Our MCW, Kern, and KNN world is remarkable. I now have even more respect for the accomplished and delightful people with whom we share this space. I have garnered new insights into the extra burden older, male, white folks like myself place on people who identify as “other.” I have been astonished by the maturity and skill of the youngest members of our community. I have seen how concepts such as mattering and the entrepreneurial mindset will soon change how medical educators approach everything they do.

Each week’s issue makes me wonder what will emerge from the ashes and chaos of the past year. The pandemic and social upheaval offer unique opportunities to innovate, lead the way, and develop new paradigms that can guide young adults from being premedical students through the phases of training to becoming character-rich, caring, and healthy practicing physicians and medical educators. By reading the Transformational Times, readers catch hints of what that change looks like.

The Kern Institute was established to “transform medical education.” This past year has transformed medical education and everything else in our worlds.  Editing the newsletter has allowed me to glimpse a better path. If everything returns to the old, comfortable status quo when the masks come off, the classrooms and labs reopen, and the pandemic recedes, we will have lost.

Having read every single article over the past year, I should have insight into all of the topics Dr. Kalet listed during our inaugural meeting last March. And, of course, I do not. But, thanks to the amazing opportunity that being editor has provided, I have learned much, become an optimist, and have glimpsed the future.

 

 

A special thanks to all of our contributors! The newsletter would not exist without the hard work of (drum roll…) Production Editor Julia Schmitt and the rest of the editorial team: Kathlyn Fletcher, MD MA, Adina Kalet, MD MPH, Wendy Peltier, MD, Michael Braun, PhD, and medical students Olivia Davies, Scott Lamm, Eileen Peterson, Sarah Torres, and Anna Visser. You are each amazing!

 

Bruce H. Campbell, MD FACS is a Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology and Communication Sciences and in the Institute for Health and Equity (Bioethics and Medical Humanities) at MCW. He is on the Faculty Pillar and is Editor in Chief of the Transformational Times newsletter for the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education.