The Transformational Times is Taking a Sabbatical (although the blog will continue)

From the September 29, 2023 issue of the Transformational Times

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The Transformational Times is Taking a Sabbatical

Adina Kalet, MD, MPH

Born on the fly to keep our medical community thoughtfully connected through the pandemic, the Transformational Times--like the rest of the world--is establishing its “new normal.” To do this, we are pausing weekly publication to gather reader input and intentionally consider how best to serve our community while continuing to reflect the transformational work at the Medical College of Wisconsin around character and caring alongside clinical excellence. Dr. Kalet shares what will happen behind the scenes, and invites readers to help shape the future of this thoughtful, medical education publication by participating in our survey ...

 

Dear Readers,

September is a time for renewal. Kids are back in school, the summer has come to an end, and in my faith, we gather to celebrate the birth of the world through our “high holy days.” At the Kern Institute we have been taking time to reflect and plan. We spent a day in retreat a couple of weeks ago, to contemplate where we have been and consider where are going next. In that spirit, the Transformational Times team is taking a short sabbatical to refresh our processes, update our vision and begin again.

 

The Transformational Times was born during the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, when the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) sent all of the students and many faculty and staff members home. As I have recounted before, we decided to transition our existing quarterly newsletter into a weekly offering, and rename it the Transformational Times. We hoped this would keep our work alive and support our medical education community.

 

As those early weeks turned into months then years, we kept up our pace, publishing 178 weekly issues of the Transformational Times and two curated books. We have taken only a handful of holiday weeks “off.” We are proud we have helped people share personal stories about their work and worlds. The tagline to be “delivering stories of hope, community, caring and resilience to our community,” has largely been honored.

 

The Transformational Times has been a success in many ways. We have grown our readership both inside and outside of MCW and received a great deal of supportive feedback and a few critical comments; we take all of our feedback very seriously. Through these efforts, we have hosted a hardy, broad conversation around the transformation of medical education and accelerated the expansive acceptance at MCW and beyond of new models for educating physicians that embody the character and caring essential to health and health care. This is the mission of the Kern Institute.

 

What to expect in the future

With the pandemic largely in the rear-view mirror, we are taking a break to reimagine the Transformational Times. Over the next few weeks, under the leadership of our new Co-Editors-in-Chief Wendy Peltier, MD and Himanshu Agrawal, MD, we will seek input from our readers. Our Editorial Board will ensure we continue to prioritize creating community and encouraging storytelling that promotes the ideas and discourse at the heart of health professions education.

 

Drs. Peltier and Agrawal will do this work along with our multidisciplinary editorial board which includes Bruce Campbell, MD (founding Editor-in-Chief); Kathlyn Fletcher, MD; Adina Kalet, MD, MPH; Karen Herzog (Milwaukee-based journalist); Justine Espisito, (Kern Institute staff); Joy Wick, (Kern Institute Communications Consultant); William Graft. Jr., MD (Resident, Internal Medicine/Psychiatry); and medical students Julia Bosco, Linda Nwumeh, Wolf Pulsiano, Sophie Voss and Emelyn Zaworski.

 

Our immediate goals are to work with Kern Institute members and the MCW leadership to:

• Refine our processes, policies, and submission guidelines
• Publish regular, theme-based issues that engage broad swaths of our community
• Leverage our Philosophies of Medical Education Transformation Lab (PMETaL) to build a civil discourse framework that enables diverse and profound conversations about our professions
• Have our editing team, including two former journalists, actively assist and encourage writers of all comfort levels
• Explore more flexible publishing platforms (video, audio, social formats, etc.)
• Integrate our work with the Kern Institute Podcast Network

 

We plan to continue and expand popular features of the Transformational Times, including:

• Themed issues for special days (e.g., Veteran’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving) and events in the medical education year (e.g., The White Coat Ceremony, Match Day, Graduation)
• Programmatic reports from the Institute, including The Learner Continuum Hub, Educator Development Hub, and the Medical Education Data Science, Human Centered Design, and the Philosophies of Medical Education Transformation labs
• Project reports from the Transformational Innovations (TI2), KINETIC3, and the MCWFusion curriculum, including Learning Communities, The Good Doctor Course, the Character and Professionalism Thread, and Learning Dashboards
• Works-in-progress on medical school to residency transitions, character measurement, and professional identity formation
• Summaries of Qualitative Research Methods, the Kern Institute Collaboration Scholarship (KICS) group journal clubs and collaborations, the Medical Education Matters Podcast, and our Medical Education Transformation book series
• Collaboration reports with Academic Affairs, the MCW Affiliated Hospitals (MCWAH) GME programs, MCW-Central Wisconsin, MCW-Green Bay, Thrive on King, the School of Pharmacy, the Physician Assistants Program, Genetic Counselling, Anesthesia Assistant Program, and the Graduate School
• Reflection on and coverage of the emerging issues of our times

Please Provide Input

While we won’t be publishing for a few weeks, we will be accepting submissions, and we encourage you to reach out to us with your ideas.

 

We want to hear from you! Whether this is your first or your 178th time reading the Transformational Times, please provide us feedback by taking our survey. If you have advice, opinions, or critiques, please reach out with your thoughts and feelings during this time. And thank you for reading, sharing, and caring.

 

In the meanwhile, watch this space for announcements of our Kern Institute events and related content.

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Sincerely,

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.

Adina Kalet, MD, MPH Honored with the 2023 NBME Hubbard Award

Adina Kalet, MD, MPH Honored with the 2023 NBME Hubbard Award

Dr. Kalet, Director of the Kern Institute, is receiving the Hubbard Award from the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) at their 2023 meeting. In lieu of an in-person acceptance speeech, she created this video that encapsulates the trajectory of her educational research, asking the critical question, "Is trust an educationally sensitigve patient outcome?"

We hope you find this remarkable talk enlightening. The link is below in the NBME's announcement. 

FROM THE NBME ANNOUNCEMENT: Established in 1983, the John P. Hubbard Award recognizes individuals for their outstanding contributions to the pursuit of excellence in assessment in medical education. During his time at NBME, Dr. Hubbard led NBME into a new era of evaluation that resulted in the adoption of objective testing methods. The Hubbard Award recognizes individuals who have made a significant and sustained contribution to the assessment of professional competency and educational program development at any level along the continuum of medical education and delivery of healthcare. We are thrilled to announce the recipient of the 2023 John P. Hubbard Award is Adina Luba Kalet, MD, MPH. Please find below a link to Dr. Kalet's pre-recorded scholarly presentation: Click here to watch the 17-minute video.

The Kern Institute Launches Podcast, Medical Education Matters

From the March 24, 2023 issue of the Transformational Times

 

The Kern Institute Launches Podcast, Medical Education Matters 

The team members share their biggest podcast influences

  

Greetings from Kern Institute podcasters Jeff Amundson, Michael T. Braun, Anita Bublik-Anderson, and Herodotos Ellinas!

 

We're here today to announce the official launch of the Kern Institute Podcast Network! We call it a network because we have ambitions to expand, and right now, you can subscribe to our show, Medical Education Matters (https://med-ed-matters.captivate.fm) wherever you get your podcasts. Please consider subscribing and leave us a review. It helps people find the show and helps us grow our audience.  

 

Why are we launching a podcast network? We can give you the standard reasons — it's good to explore novel ways to disseminate info, podcasts continue to be popular, and working remotely makes recording easier, thanks to Zoom. But the main reason is because podcasts are fun to make and enjoyable for listeners. When we interact with each other in virtual meetings, we have so many conversations about the work of the Kern Institute and our goals of transforming medical education. Why not take these interactions and put them out for others to hear. 

 

In addition, we all come to podcasting from unique places. When Jeff first started in a post-doc role at MCW, he launched a short-lived podcast which included original content and studio-recorded, original music! Anita did podcasting with students – as another way to get students excited about education. Herodotos brought the idea of podcasting to me as a way to distribute information from our Kern Collaboratories groups. Michael dabbled in podcasting in 2005 and otherwise came to the effort with an enthusiastic "let's do it!" voice and drive.  

 

What will you find when you subscribe to the show? First, you'll see we've been busy! We have over a dozen episodes already up -- a rich catalogue for you to dig into. We purposefully put off the official launch until we had episodes recorded and released. Launching a new venture with a single show available felt anti-climactic. Where was the guarantee this work would continue? Where could you hear more?  

 

Second, you'll see a mix of show formats. Our main show features panel discussions of themed topics. We took advantage of a string of holidays when producing these shows, so you'll find Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Valentine's Day represented. We tie the themes of holidays to medical education and enjoy riffing on the topic.  

 

Another series of episodes begins with the acronym MEDICC, which stands for Medical Education in Countryside Communities. This podcast features interviews with educators and learners on our MCW-Central Wisconsin campus in Wausau. It’s led by Drs. Amundson and Bublik-Anderson. It's great to hear from this campus and learn more about medical education focused on the concerns of rural areas.  

 

Still another podcast is our "collaboratory conversations." The Kern Collaboratories program, as you may know, is a small grants program for transformative medical education research. We currently fund six collaborative research efforts with teams spread across the country. Dr. Ellinas and Dr. Braun run this program and have recorded conversations with these groups so you can learn more about their research.  

 

We look forward to bringing you other types of shows as our podcast network expands! This could also include spinning off shows in their own "feed," so you can subscribe to just shows of a particular type. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to get shows you like from the Kern Institute Podcast Network.  

 

This raises a key question: What is it that you like to listen to? It's something we talked to a lot of people about when planning. We also considered the podcasting, radio, and television personalities that influenced us. There are a lot of podcast formats, and we settled on a few key facets. We wanted our shows to be conversational, rather than formal and highly produced. We wanted them to be longer to allow time for digging into topics and real interactions. And we wanted to make sure our effort was sustainable. We decided to put out a new episode every two weeks.  

 

So, what are you waiting for? Head to wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe! Not a podcast listener? Find the podcast app available for your smartphone. Search for "Medical Education Matters" and subscribe. We can't wait to start speaking directly to you!  

 

 

Our Biggest Podcasting Influences 

 

Jeff Amundson, PhD: 

Oddly, I do not listen to podcasts. My influence for podcasting comes from television, specifically, Dick Cavett. Dick Cavett was a comedic writer who eventually started his own show in 1969, which ran until 1995. His style was very conversational with a sense of curiosity that prompted deep thoughts from those being interviewed. And he had a comical spin which made the conversation as a listener a pleasant process baited with anticipation as to how his wit would be taken, given the contentious times and the guests. It was another time in our American culture with much division around social issues (e.g., counterculture, Vietnam war, civil rights). But as Michael Schulman points out in the above article, Cavett always found a way to exist on both sides of such issues, which made his show inviting to all types of guests from Groucho Marx to Muhammad Ali. (Sorry to those readers not familiar with either, but hey, that’s why we have Google.) I only started watching The Dick Cavett Show a few years ago on the “re-run” channel. What captivated me was how his topics are still relevant today. For example, when he met with the likes of Lucille Ball and Carrol Burnett and discussed the challenges of being female in Hollywood. A topic sadly still relevant today. And the use of the word met captures the essence of what he was trying to do. That is, something like a conversation one might have in a chance meeting with an old friend or a stranger while sitting at the bar, having a drink.  

I try to emulate Cavett’s free-flow approach by always having a conversation rather than an objective based on guiding principles of interviewing. I try to find my spot in the conversation, like the timing of a good comedian. One needs to be able to place a thought/response/subsequent question at the right moment, like hitting the right note when jamming with a group of musicians. And, like the placing of a good joke or comical response or striking of a chord, the placement of my next thought or question can shift the conversation up or down, left or right, tangential, (which can be good or bad) or deeper than expected. I prefer just being Jeff in the conversation -- curious enough about others so they can be who they are, as well.  

 

Or, as Michael Schulman wrote, “Cavett gently prodded his subjects into revealing themselves.”  

Michael T. Braun, PhD:  

Apple added podcasts to iTunes in 2005, and at the time, I enjoyed downloading shows like This American Life to listen to while painting my aunt's house one summer. Other than that, podcasts weren't a part of my life until around 2011, when I began running competitively and training for longer distances. I needed something to listen to that made me think; the music was too easy to tune out and left me focused on how good it would feel to walk for a little while. That's when I found the podcast The B.S. Report from Bill Simmons, who worked for ESPN at the time.  

 

Who is Bill Simmons? First and foremost, he's a sports columnist who got his start in the early days of the Internet. If you like your sports columnists to have a rooting interest in a team, rather than stand as objective observers of sport, then you have Simmons to thank. Simmons began his writing for AOL; next moved to ESPN where, among other things, he ran the vaunted website Grantland.com (R.I.P.); and he's now with a website he founded, TheRinger.com.  

 

Simmons is also an early adopter of podcasting and perhaps the originator of the casual conversation podcast, in which the host isn't interviewing but rather an active participant in the conversation. Simmons's podcasting work involves talking with athletes and celebrities, with his signature mix of pop culture and sports, but it also means talking with old college roommates, family members (most notably, his dad, but also recently, his teenage children), former co-workers, and other friends. Listening to Simmons's current podcast--The Bill Simmons Podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network--gives you a sense of what it would be like to sit and have coffee with Simmons, different from the formal tones of an NPR interview or the hyper-produced and edited interactions of other podcasts.  

 

So, yah—I want to be Bill Simmons in my conversations, and I want to record a podcast with Simmons for his show and for our show. That's unlikely to happen, but Simmons is my podcasting role model, and I hope our little corner of the podcasting world can reflect the influence Simmons has had on my work.  

 

Anita Bublik-Anderson, MD:  

My podcast muse is Larry Meiller. This man is a treasure and is my date from 11 am. -- 12:30 p.m. on Wisconsin Public Radio, Ideas Network.  It was Covid that steered me to him. While locked down in my basement and weary of the body counts, riots, and uncertainty of democracy, I found The Larry Meiller Show and haven’t looked back. This is a call-in show with local, mostly Wisconsin folks with expertise in topics from amateur astronomy, general contracting, physical therapy or gardening.  As I listen to all the people calling in with questions, I am transported out of my usual world to wonder about stuff I never considered before, like turkey hunting or the science behind how snow smells. How interesting! (It has something to do with ozone.) 

 

His show may be “everyday” but I’m always learning, which is my jam. I love you, Larry Meiller! 

 

Herodotos Ellinas, MD, MHPE:  

Though I am not a “full-time” podcast listener, I love a great talk while I am walking or running. I was introduced to podcasting by my cousin, who is a managing director for a national advisory practice and an avid podcaster in her free time. We were talking about the state of affairs in our country around the George Floyd murder when she brought up Scene on Radio. This show is produced at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University and discusses relevant, challenging topics that should be considered by all of us. The hosts, CDS audio director John Biewen and his collaborators, explore history, delve into sexism, and look deeper into our roots to evaluate where we have been and where perhaps we are heading. Season two (14 episodes) examined race and got me obsessed with this transformative podcast series in my role as co-chair for the diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice committee for the Society for Education in Anesthesia. The episodes are engaging, informative, and most of all, thought-provoking. Listen to the last episode where Mr. Biewen and guests explore solutions and responses to America’s deep history of white supremacy. You will not be disappointed. 

 

 

Jeff Amundson, PhD, is assistant professor at MCW-CW. Michael T. Braun, PhD, is program manager in the Kern Institute. Anita Bublik-Anderson, MD, is assistant professor at MCW-CW. Herodotos Ellinas, MD, MHPE, is professor at the University of Minnesota.