Remembering the Earliest Days of the Pandemic: The Institute Responds to Times of Transition

From the April 24, 2020 issue of the Transformational Times

Remembering the Earliest Days of the Pandemic: The Institute Responds to Times of Transition

Adina Kalet, MD, MPH

This April 2020 essay was originally published six weeks after classes shut down at MCW. Despite the unknown risks, our physicians, nurses, and front line workers stayed on the job. 

During the very earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were all scared for our lives; the danger was very, very real and the future was uncertain. Despite this, the Kern Institute's leaders and educators shifted the Institute's focus to make certain students were supported and prepared. As you read, recall those days when we worried about the transitions and the future. 

In the coming months, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education will transition again. Those of us associated with the Institute hope that whatever iteration emerges will continue to provide a sustained, innovative, and character-driven platform that influences the future of health sciences education. 

 

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit our economy hard. On our own campuses, saving and protecting lives has caused unprecedented revenue shortfalls within our community, to our hospitals, and to the Medical College of Wisconsin. Ironically, just when health care provision, education, and research are needed most, our work is threatened. Those on the “front line” of the pandemic deserve hazard pay for taking on risks for the rest of us, yet our staff is facing salary reductions and furloughs. 

Along with many of our peer institutions, MCW is implementing a financial austerity plan. We have hit a very rough patch and more changes are coming. Our futures are uncertain. People are scared. In this context, the Kern Institute is working to be good citizens by aligning emerging needs with our resources.

There can be opportunity in adversity

Historians point out that even devastating crises offer opportunities to societies. We have already seen unprecedented innovations in the face of immediate problems. Unable to deliver required clinical rotations, faculty and students are co-creating ways to fill curricular gaps through telehealth and service learning. New levels of collaboration and cooperation among medical schools and with accreditors have broken-down traditional silos, suddenly changing systems and shifting long-held policies. 

We must leverage these transformative opportunities for the better. If we work together to retain our senses of mission, purpose, and meaning, we will increase our individual and organizational well-being and resiliency. 

Pivoting what we do, yet remaining thoughtful

In our pre COVID-19 lives, the Kern Institute had been working to clarify our philosophy of medical education transformation. We referred to this as our “topology of transformation,” seeking to best understand why we are doing what we are doing. By thinking, dialoging, reading, and writing, we wrestled with uncovering which experiences are essential as a student transforms into the “good physician.” Then, and only then, would we allow ourselves to talk about the instructional or pedagogical evidence that drives the design and implementation of programs that achieve this transformation. For most of us, especially impatient physicians, it takes discipline not to jump into the “doing” too soon.

Suddenly, COVID-19 accelerated our work

Plato is credited with the phrase, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” sometimes translated more literally as, “Our need will be the real creator." While I prefer the more feminine flourish, now is the time when innovation is needed most. Over the past few weeks, Kern has pivoted to assist MCW’s rapidly transforming educational programs in response to immediate needs and we are designing ways to streamline and sustain the best of these changes. 

We are collaborating with partners in Academic Affairs and Student Affairs to support well-being, prepare students to meet their graduation requirements, provide meaningful clinical experiences, sustain and strengthen MCW’s long-term investments in diversity and inclusion, and speed the design and implementation of a dynamic, state of-the-art fully virtual curriculum.

Some things are the same in both 2020 and 2024

These are historic times globally and locally. As we adapt our educational work to the new reality, we will study the outcomes, learn from our successes and shortcomings, and look for the new topology of transformation. 

The essay was originally published on April 24, 2020 as, "Transforming Educational Strategies on a Dime."

Adina Kalet, MD MPH is the Director of the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education and holder of the Stephen and Shelagh Roell Endowed Chair at the Medical College of Wisconsin.