How communities of practice transform healthcare education with Beth West

[MUSIC] Hello dear community builders and welcome back to Mapping Ties, where we curate and spotlight stories of togetherness at work. Today I am in conversation with a special guest. Beth West is the director of the Patricia, a TTN MD teaching academy at Newvon's Health. I met Beth last year in Susimba during the community of practice training with Etienne and Beverly Vanger Triner and I found her work and dedication so inspiring. We kept in touch and I knew her story is perfect for our podcast. This episode is packed with practical tips and lots of lessons learned during the several iterations of the community between 2021 and today. Beth has so much wisdom to share and her commitment to continuous improvement and learning is nothing short of amazing. I recommend you grab a pen and paper for this one and enjoy the conversation. Hello, hello, Beth. It's super cool to finally have you on the podcast. How are you doing? Doing well, Ana. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to talk with you. Let's jump straight in. Tell us a bit about your journey into community building, Beth, and then also where are you now? Tell us a bit about your role in the community you're building at the moment. Yeah, yeah, perfect. Maybe I'll take the second part of that question first and then go back to the roles that communities and communities of practice have played in my own life for a very long time. Currently, one of the most amazing communities that I get to work with is a community of practice called the Patricia A. T. Jean MD Teaching Academy. This is a community of practice for clinician educators at New Vance Health where I work. New Vance Health is a network of community serving academic hospitals. We are seven hospitals currently in the Northeastern United States in Connecticut and New York. We serve as a clinical training site for medical students, for residents and fellows. All of the members of this community of practice are both clinicians, but they're also doing really amazing educational work. Teaching, they're doing research, they're building curriculum, they're working through learner assessments, scholarly research and writing, just kind of the whole gamut. We were founded in 2021, renamed after Dr. Patricia T. Jean, who really was just an amazing woman at New Vance. She was New Vance Health's first chief medical officer, which was really an amazing position to be in. There are not that many female CMOs in hospitals, leading hospital systems in the United States, particularly at that time a few years ago. Unfortunately, Dr. T. Jean passed away from cancer, and really we get to do this work to honor her legacy in memory as well. Wow, that is beautiful. Is this the first role in community building, but tell us how you got here. Yeah, yeah. Gosh, well, like so many people, I'm kind of a pandemic refugee from the COVID-19 pandemic. So my previous career was in the world of international education. So I served in a number of roles both in the United States and overseas. I lived in Mexico and Colombia for 11 years. In total, and I worked building communities and building connections in international education and exchange programs. So working with the Fulbright program, working with US institutions, like Indiana University and CIEE. And that was really, that was really amazing. I have to say, my years spent in Latin America, I think helped kind of sensitize me to how important community is. No, we look at things like cultural dimensions and in the United States, we tend to be a little bit more individualistic, but we all need community. So yeah. Fabulous, nice. And you are leading now the teaching academy. You mentioned that it was started in 2021. Take us back to 2021. What was the motivation behind the lounge of the of the teaching academy? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So 2021, we're still smack dab in the middle of the horrible COVID-19 pandemic. And NewVance Health, like many other health systems in the United States and probably around the world, was really under attack on so many fronts. Clinicians were feeling extremely burnt out, you know, concerned about their own health and well-being, their families and always, first and foremost, they're thinking about patients as well, but having to work under really incredible conditions. So lots of folks were leaving the profession at that time. And so, yeah, NewVance, like many other organizations, was experiencing a high rate of turnover. And, you know, like what could affect the health system worse than having clinician educators? So those who are really in charge of shaping and teaching, educating the next generation of clinicians, having them leave the profession really meant disastrous impacts for generations to come. So originally, the Patricia A. T. Jean MD teaching academy was conceived as a way to potentially mitigate professional burnout and also kind of stave this, you know, high rates of employee turnover. And as I had mentioned, this was really the dream of Dr. T. Jean to have an interprofessional community of practice at NewVance Health. Although we didn't conceive of it as a community of practice just yet, I had to learn about that theoretical model, which then became our foundation moving forward. So take us, please, on a bit of a journey of how did it all start? How was it set up? And also maybe how it has evolved in broad strokes up till today. Yeah, my stones, like what were some of the things you were celebrating along the line, what changed. And then we're going to go more into depth in programs and actually what the community does at the moment. Sure, sure, sure. So originally, the teaching academy, and I should also just say that, you know, I don't do this work alone. I have a fabulous counterpart. NewVance was very smart in setting this up. I was hired as director of the teaching academy and I was immediately paired with a clinical partner. So, you know, I'm a non-clinical person and my partner is Dr. Robins-Gitina, who's a critical care pulmonologist and runs the intensive care unit at Norwalk Hospital. And she's fabulous. We are a Yin and Yang, a match made in heaven. She's very tolerant and open to uncertainty and embraces sort of the unpredictable nature, which makes sense for like an ICU physician. And I'm much more methodical, you know, I like things sort of planned out. I like to prepare. And so the two of us together, I think, have over the years taught each other quite a lot as we built this amazing community together. So we initially, yeah, planned until I was hired in June of 2021. We launched the academy in September of 2021. And, you know, at the very beginning, one of our earliest scholars said, I'd love a copy of the syllabus. And, you know, I looked at my counterpart Dr. Skitina and I said, are we going to have a syllabus? And she said, you know, by the end of this program, we'll have a syllabus. At the end of the first year, we'll have a syllabus to share. So it was very much, you know, building the airplane while it's at 10,000 feet. And so our first group of scholars are inaugural cohort. And there were 15 scholars and our inaugural cohort were so brave to just like hop on that airplane and be part of this. You know, as we were really building it together, I'll say that like probably lots of community builders, we kind of did everything wrong the first, the first go around. But there were a few things that we did right also. In the beginning, we always wanted to have our scholars meet in person, but because of the pandemic and COVID restrictions, we had to meet virtually. So we had planned monthly four hour blocks, which we did on Zoom. And it was, you know, very anti-frereon. It was deposit the knowledge. It was very heavy lecture-based, you know, the dactic instruction. But when we finally were able to meet in person about seven months into the program, our first year of the academy, it was like, you know, just amazing. You could feel the electricity in the air, our scholars, being in the same room, even I think masked and socially, just didn't step that time. They were so excited to be with one another. And we realized very quickly from that experience, and then also from feedback following our first year, that the real secret ingredient in the teaching academy is not any particular lesson that we can deliver or you know a didactic curricula piece but it's the engagement that happens when we have these incredible interprofessional educators together. So that was our first year. We had 15 scholars, we initially had planned to accept 12 scholars but we had so many incredible applications from clinician educators across the New Vance Health System. We even had a few non-clinical folks that were just too amazing to pass up so we have a medical librarian in our inaugural cohort which is going to tremendous asset to the overall community as we've built. And yeah, we took the lessons that we learned from that first year and used that to iterate for further cohorts moving forward. I'm super curious to when you put that call for scholars, right? So, hey, we're opening this new thing. It's called a teaching academy. How did you sell it? Like, what were they invited to? What was the promise? What were they saying yes to basic? Right, great. Yeah, because we couldn't provide a syllabus at that point. It wasn't done. Right? Exactly. So, what was the thing? I think one of the things that really allowed us to be successful quite quickly as a community of practice was our name. So, being named after just a really beloved member of the New Vance Health Community, Dr. Teigen, opened doors for us. And, as you know, I've been doing my own dissertation research around the teaching academy as well. And so, in the data that I've collected and interviews with scholars, so many said, I didn't really know what I was signing up for, but I had Dr. Teigen's name and I knew that it meant something and that it was going to be good. So, we were really blessed and fortunate to have that sort of immediate printability because of our namesake. But what we did promise was that we would create a community for passionate and promising educators. And that was important at New Vance because although we're an independent academic medical center and we have lots of affiliations with universities and medical schools, we are not located on an academic campus like a university or a med school. So, all these clinicians are doing day-to-day education all the time, but there hasn't really been a home for them to find one another, to learn from one another, to improve their skills, share their challenges, etc. So, that's what the teaching academy promise to offer was a home for these passionate and promising clinician educators. All right. And so, you mentioned that it started in the in the midst of the pandemic, right? And so, you were forced by the circumstances to meet online. You started with those four hours Zoom calls and you had almost that magical serendipious aha eye opening moment when you brought everyone in the same room offline and there was that buzz, I think eventually it felt like magic. So, how did that evolve over time? They were meeting I believe like recurrently once every, I don't know, maybe a month, but a few months. Yes. I think it's interesting to understand what were those sessions focused on? What was happening there? What were you doing? And also, how has that activity or the activities, the opportunities inside the community? How has that transformed now over the years? What keeps them busy? What are they doing? How are they growing? How are they learning? Because I know that you've started small, but having the meantime developed quite an interesting ecosystem of activities and opportunities with them. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, we tried to, I think, really iterate and take the best of both worlds. After that first year, we learned that there was a valuable component to offering online accessibility, right? So, our scholars are scattered across seven hospitals geographically. It's about a two-hour drive from the furthest potential points. So, having some online components still made sense, but there's something, you know, it's undeniable. The magic, as you said, that can happen when we bring people together in the same space. So, for future sessions, for future years, and now we're in our fourth cohort of clinician educators, we decided to, yeah, sort of take the best of both worlds. So, we kind of changed the format of our curriculum and delivery so that we would meet in person every other month for those larger four-hour blocks. And of course, that had to include food, right? Because people connect best whenever we're breaking bread together. And then supplemented in between those in person months with virtual sessions. And we've played around with the format of that a little bit over the years, but what we settled on is an hour and a half at twice a month. So, it's a nice balance of in-person meeting as well as virtual sessions. And our curriculum overall is structured around our six pillars. So, our six pillars kind of form the foundation. All that you can think of them as bucket areas. And all of our didactic sessions, like what are they learning about in these sessions, fall under one of these pillars or into one of these bucket areas. So, things like teaching, curriculum development, learner assessment, scholarly research, and writing, educational, leadership, and mentoring and advising. So, these are the main areas that exist within health professions education. And so, we use that initially to guide our curriculum. Now, in the subsequent year since we launched something called the Clinician Educator Milestones was published. And this is another sort of guiding document that was put together through the AAAMC, the ACGME, and other leading health professions education organizations to kind of help lay out a pathway for clinician educators. Because prior to that, there really hasn't been kind of a like clear steps for what folks should follow if they want to have a career as a clinician, but also as an educator. So, yeah, so one of the core pieces of our program is that every scholar that's accepted has to develop their own individual scholarly project. And this is really important. It should be something that they're passionate about, a change that they want to make within their department, within their area. And also, their scholarly project tends to fall into one of those six pillar areas. So, we've had many scholars that develop, for instance, a piece of curriculum that helps support the work that they do. We've had scholars that are, for instance, doing new teaching assessments, new teaching styles, flip classrooms, scholars that are working on their own educational leadership skills. So, lots of different focuses that scholars can sort of pick from. But this goes beyond a quality improved project. In health professions education, there's a lot of talk about QI, quality improvement. And this is really getting at the educational piece. So, yeah, there's probably a quality improvement aspect, but what are people learning? And how are we assessing that? How are we helping support that as well? And of course, our scholars would have to showcase their amazing projects. And so that happens every year at our annual Grand Rounds and Academic Symposium. And that happens every June. We rotate around this in-person event at different hospitals so that every hospital also has a chance to host the academic symposium. And scholars from previous cohorts come back and report on progress and development of their scholarly project. And also, they get a chance to share their work in some slightly more interesting and creative formats. So, like, we do something that's similar to a TED talk, but we use our abbreviation, P-A-T-M-D-T-A-L-K. So, like, you know, Patricia A.T. And it's really a lot of fun. But so, scholars are getting so much. They're getting connection with one another. They're getting the opportunity to build, you know, a truly rigorous academic scholarly project over the course of their first year. And then, you know, we don't really let them leave. Robin loves to describe our teaching academy, like joking, not joking, in terms of fight club, right? Like, once you remember the teaching academy, we never let you leave. And that's been awesome, you know. A little daunting from a program development piece, like, oh, we now we have to build a continuing track as well. But it's been a ton of fun. And as we get more and more scholars involved over the years, we're, you know, we've recently hit our 100th scholar mark. It also becomes a lot more self-sustaining. So, our more senior scholars are now able to mentor newer scholars. They're able to also support and develop some of the curriculum for the continuing scholars program as well. So, it's pretty awesome. Wow. Okay. Let me do a bit of a, for myself. And for the listeners, because this was a lot of juice. I love it. So, we've got almost like a yearly, let's say, onboarding of new cohorts, yes, of new scholars that are joining. We started with 15. We've now hit the 100th mark. That's exciting in a few years. And that's across three tracks, I should say, also. Oh, right. Because we started also like, we never just stay with what we've got. Like, we're always innovating and creating new things. We also want to train e-track. So, that's for a different group. That's for, for senior residents and fellows. So, newer physicians that are just beginning. beginning their careers as clinician educators. And we also then launched a very small clinical research track for those who are already teaching as graduate medical education faculty, but want to improve their clinical research skills. So yeah, but by far, our largest piece of the community is our clinician educator cohort. And yeah, we're currently in our fourth about to open up call for applications to our fifth cohort of the clinician educators. All right, so we've got three tracks, right? - Yes. - Yes. - We have the clinical initial, clinical, clinical, - Clinician educators. - Yeah, clinicians. - Clinicians educators, there we go. We've got the trainee track for the young physicians, senior residence fellows, and then we've got the clinical research track. - Yes. - Beautiful. So we've got three tracks and they all work on a yearly cohort basis where we welcome use scholars. And they all kind of, I don't wanna say, well, they all they commit. Every single one of them has this individual scholarly project that they're working towards, something they're passionate about and they're called in building throughout their year inside the academy. And I love how you put in this, 'cause that was one of my questions. Like what do you do with the cohort? Like are you closing them? Are they leaving like do you off board them? And you were like, well, actually, as this thing evolved over the years, we really wanted you to keep them after that year. And yeah, that was an interesting piece of design that you have to kind of go back to the drawing board to see, well, what can we create and design for these, the cohorts once they're finishing in order to keep them engaged and kind of maximize that value that they can get from each other. So understand that you have this almost a mentoring piece, right? And they're also coming back in this symposium to share their progress and how that their projects evolved over the years, et cetera. And so basically you come in, you work on something very specific for a year. You've got this mix of online versus offline gatherings. There's pieces of content that come your way, but you can also work with a mentor. There's a lot of peer sharing. There's a lot of learning by doing as they're building up their project. This culminates at the end of the year with this June symposium where everyone kind of share what they've been working on. And then they have the opportunities to stay on longer as mentors. As mentors and as continuing scholars. And so that's like a really big point of distinction, I think, that's where we shifted from being just sort of an educational program or professional learning community or professional development program to being a community of practice. Because after that first nine months wrapped up, the scholars were like, well, what's next? Now what? They didn't want to leave. They didn't want the experience to be over. They felt there was still so much more that they could learn from one another and grow together. And so it became very clear that this was going to be like a longitudinal forever sort of community. And that's when we adopted the community of practice model as well, rather than just sort of a delivery model of distinct modules that had like a fixed end in sight. - I think you just have something that, if I remember well, something called coordinators amongst the community members, among amongst the scholars. What can you tell us about them? I think that every year, very few of them get to be picked or nominated to become a coordinators. Tell us about that. - Sure, sure. So part of this was necessity, but also with a fantastic opportunity for our scholars to get involved and sort of flex their and grow their own educational leadership skills. Scholars who have completed the first year of the curriculum, who continue with us within the academy, we pick two continuing scholars every year to be the coordinators for our continuing scholars group. And so they help design curriculum. They help to speakers. They help also do debriefs and sort of connecting pieces within our live activities. They send out really fun and engaging messages to our scholars as well to keep the excitement level high between sessions. And it's really been amazing to get to continue to work with them as well. We call them Y2+ coordinators. So year two plus coordinators. And so it's a volunteer position. They get a little bit of support in an academic area, whether they attend an academic conference or something like that that is teaching academy supported brother than that. It's really just because they're passionate about the community practice. And they wanna give back and be more involved. - Yes, let's talk a bit about that piece of rewards or what besides obviously the obvious fact of I'm connected with peers. I'm connected with different people. I get access to the content that comes from your way, the curricula, the projects, et cetera. Are there any other type of rewards that you've built around probably the scholars themselves or the cohorts or the mentors or the continuous scholars? Are you working with anything around that? And I'm asking that because you know, it's usually these projects they don't necessarily come with a project extra budget attached to that. That means that people don't get paid to engage. And so they have to tap into their internal motivation to be there and to engage. And it also, it's up to the design of the community and the community managers to find ways to reward, spotlight, amplify whatever happens inside the community as a means of rewarding their contribution. - What have you experimented with on that front? - Yeah, great question, Ana Maria. And this is especially important when we think about it within the US medical context where protected time is like the name of the game, right? So there's a terrible phrase that is kind of describes the system overall in terms of revenue generation and how healthcare in the US works, which is you eat what you kill, meaning like the only thing that brings in revenue is seeing patients, right? So we are not a revenue generating entity as an educational community of practice, at least it doesn't appear like that, right? So that's why it's really important for us to also collect those value creation stories as well, which I could, well, I know we'll talk about it a little bit further on. - Well, we'll definitely talk about that. And well, now that you plug it in, you feel free to kind of add it there because-- - Sure, sure. - I know that you've done a bit of work around, well, quite a lot of work around that too. - Continue. So yeah, feel free to plug it in, yes. - Continue to do that, yeah. And really also that's why I decided to focus my own dissertation work for my EDD and educational leadership around it's a phenomenological study looking at the lived experience of these clinician educator members of this community practice. I think I know what their experience is. I think I know what it means to them, but I really wanted to dig in and to better understand. And so yeah, initially conceived as a way to potentially mitigate burnout. You mentioned very correctly, like great didactic sessions and information and sort of cutting edge techniques in education across their six pillars, et cetera. But what I found also from my research is that some of the biggest pieces, the most valuable takeaways for our scholar members is really just the sense of belonging, that they feel they feel better connected to the larger organization because they are sharing a purpose. You know, they know that they're with like-minded people even though there's an incredible amount of diversity within our interprofessional academy. They have the opportunity to cross silos. So a surgical oncologist is working alongside an APRN, is working alongside a medical librarian, is working alongside a speech language pathologist. And this actually simulates what's happening in a real world, right? Like we have to work across disciplines and across teams. But there's not a lot of opportunity for health professions educators to engage in that way, except for in really tense, terse moments of patient care. And so part of the beauty of the academy is that it gives the opportunity for them to get to know one another, to share perspectives. You know, wow, I never thought about it this way or for someone who's perhaps a little bit more junior to look at a surgical oncologist or an aphrologist and say, wow, they also sometimes feel imposter syndrome. Oh my goodness. So it smashes the hierarchy that exists in medicine. It smashes those sort of silos and builds connections of belonging. And another thing that scholars really reported strongly in my data collection for my dissertation is this idea of greater self-efficacy, identifying as clinician educators, feeling confident to call themselves clinician educators. Many of them are doing constant teaching and learning work. They're day to day, but their titles don't necessarily reflect that. And that's hugely important for scholars to-- feel like, you know, they can really own this, that they can make a difference as well. So, I know that you use a method that is a very specific method to gather these stories and to collect this data from, from your people in your dissertation. And I remember that because I took note of that with, we kind of had an exploration chatbath. And you talked about this concept of a rich pictures drawing. Yeah. What is that? Well, what is it? How do we use it? And why have you chosen that as a data collection method? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And let me just go back a sec also and just share that when I first proposed this idea of exploring the lived experience of clinician educators within a community of practice to my, to one of my advisors in my EDD program, I said, you know, I think it's, I think I'm going to see that participation in the academy, you know, mitigates burnout that it helps improve sort of overall job satisfaction. And my advisor at the time said, well, I don't know, it sounds like you're asking a lot of them. It could cause burnout. My prediction is that you're going to find that this causes burnout. And I'm very happy to report and I may dedicate, you know, in my early acknowledgments, I may dedicate to that initial advisor that, you know, I was very happy to find the contrary that it did not cause burnout. But yeah, so rich pictures are a data elicitation method. So it's not a methodology per se, but it's a methodology to elicit data. So very, very simple, very intuitive. It comes from the K-12 education world. So imagine that you are asking your participant to sit down with a sheet of paper, a nice big blank sheet of paper, and a box of markers. And the specific prompt that I gave to scholar participants in my dissertation research was draw me a picture of your experience as a member in the Patricia A. T. And that was it. So very broad. And you know, just to their credit, like our scholars are so amazing, they really are excited about jumping into uncertainty. You know, I think they've learned over time through being members of the academy that we don't always follow a very tight structured, well-beaten path, you know, sometimes we throw these curveballs at them. So they were like, okay, I'm game. And I had some amazing pictures, which are now part of my research data, which will also be shared at the academic symposium this June. These drawings of journeys and, you know, winding roads and deep forests and lighthouses and, you know, high peaks and low peaks. And in some cases, lots of stick figures, I should say, like people really leaned into their stick figure drawings. But in some cases stick figures with their hair on fire and talking about how they felt like they were in a really dark toxic place. But through working through the academy and, you know, quote unquote, finding their people and having this opportunity to engage, they, they've really reported feeling a sense of belonging, a shared sense of purpose, a greater sense of self-efficacy and identity as clinician educators and, you know, restored. It was amazing, some of the things that came out in those interviews, including, you know, several scholars reported that they were at like turning points when they applied for the teaching academy. They were either going to leave the organization or, you know, they needed to change. One scholar reported that the day that she applied for the teaching academy, she also applied for another job and then she went on vacation for a week. And by the time she came back, she had been accepted to the academy and also had a job offer. And so she decided to stay with the academy for a year to see what would happen. And that's she reported that changed everything for her. So she became a Y2 plus coordinator is still a very active leader within the academy four years later. So it basically does what it was aiming to do. It keeps people. It supports people. It enables them. It helps them. And I think that that's the most beautiful testament that you and Robin as well can take as a win after all these years. I really love this. The reach picture is drawing because it was very new to me. So I wasn't aware of it. I didn't knew what it is. And because I remember you explaining it to me and saying, hey, it really helps draw much richer insights that beyond what we can usually verbally articulate. So you're using it almost as a pro, first they draw and then you have that conversation and you use it as a proxy for having much more richer conversations and stories when they're asked to describe what they draw instead of just saying, hey, what is this experience like for you? And so beautiful. 100% yeah. Yeah. And honestly, you know, even before they pick up the marker and start drawing, this is where the value of the process is. It requires participants to critically self-reflect before they even start drawing. So like, what symbols am I going to use? What images do I want to convey? What's the story that I want to fill this paper with with microlemarkers? You know, it definitely gets at more subtle, more complex feelings, which works really nicely within a phenomenological framework. Right. So if you ask a person like, you know, has your experience in the teaching academy, they'll say, oh, yeah, it was great. But you're not getting the storyline of the person, you know, the stick figure whose hair was on fire, who crossed a bridge, did a journey through a forest and then made it to the top of, you know, a lighthouse where now they can see and their hair's not on fire anymore. You know, so it's definitely requires that critical self-reflection first to make those choices of what pieces, what symbols are they going to use? What's the movement to it? They're really fantastic. I'm happy to share with you some of these rich pictures as well. They're a lot of fun. Yes. Thank you very much, Beth. And you've hit the 100 scholars mark your few years in. You've experimented a lot, which I think it's beautiful and it's great. It's just how commissar practice should function. Right. So not everything's at the endstone. We're going to have a look and see an experiment and test and add and subtract and pivot and and all that good stuff. And you kind of develop and went along building that airplane as you were flying it with adding the pillars and having the three tracks and kind of finding opportunities for for scholars to stay longer and get engaged. So you just added layers and layers and different opportunities to the experience of the community of practice. What is next? Like when you look into the future, what do you and Robin see for this project? Oh my goodness. What are you working on being small? It doesn't matter. Things that are kind of like on your radar and they might you might not even become a reality, right? Because you never know. Sarah, just curious. It turns off dreaming and vision and future. What are some things that come to mind for the teaching the Academy going forward? Yeah. Yeah. So I think kind of three things. The first thing that I'm thinking of is fine-tuning what we've integrated this year, which is a much greater degree of social learning within our practices within our live sessions. So rather than having a one-hour lecture and five-minute debrief at the end, what we've tried to do is well, our sessions are now virtual sessions are now an hour and a half. And we really, really work with our guest faculty to limit any sort of lecture or slides, which comes with the territory. There's always going to be some lectures or slides, especially within health professions education. This is sort of sacrilege not to have, but to limit that to like 40 minutes, 45 minutes tops so that we have a full 45 minutes for our scholars to engage with that material, whether it's to try out a new technique in small groups to discuss the and debate, you know, the applicability in their environments, just to really work with that material. So that's one thing that we're doing, but I think that we want to continue to fine-tune because it requires breaking out of some of this sort of boss-life thinking for us, you know, in the sense that we're oftentimes just like we're really, I don't know, a custom to going into these situations and being passive learners, you know, sitting, slides, slides, slide. And what we're asking for our learners is something very different, right? That they really engage. We're also asking something really different from our faculty, from our guest speakers. You know, come prepared to like get some pushback to be tested to help our scholars see how this can, you know, whether it's a, I don't know, like a curriculum design tool, for instance. Like, how can this really be used in their context? So that's one thing. So we're going to continue to fine-tune that. The second thing that we're working on right now for future iterations of the Teaching Academy is moving into the podcast space, which I know is near and dear to your heart and just watching what you do has been so helpful for me as well. So what we'd like to do is to take some of that didactic portion and the instructional lecture pieces with our guest speakers, with our guest faculty, the Academy, and move that into the podcast space. So so many of our health professions educators are members of this community practice through doing a lot of commuting, they're driving long distances, they're back and forth, and having some of that lecture material, but in an engaging way via podcast, gives them the freedom, they can listen in their cars, they can listen while they're on the elliptical, they can listen while they're cooking dinner for their family, is right? And kind of preloading some of that, the dactic pieces so that when we do meet, whether it's virtual or in person, that our scholars can just, you know, capitalize and use all of that time for reach engagement. So that's our plan. So Robin and I are in podcast school right now. I'm sure we'll have tons of questions to ask you and guidance, but we're really excited about that, and that will be launched for this fall. And then third, well, maybe there's four things, but third, we've always had this dream of having an emeritus track as well. So what does that mean? That would be inviting retired clinician educators to come back and to know, on sort of a part-time basis, participate in community of practice, share their knowledge, their experience, et cetera. And then a big thing that's coming up for us is that we are looking at a merger with Northwell Health. So that'll be happening in your's crust in the next couple of months. They're a much larger health system. They're 21 hospitals across New York, through the city, Long Island. And they're really excited about the teaching academy. They're excited about our model. They, we've met with them. They, it's really amazing. There's so much bigger than us, but they feel like they can learn quite a lot from us about the academy model using communities of practice to build connections. - Hmm. He really turns into this unique piece or like an edge or a strategic initiative that you have at the moment. And so I think I'm curious to know who are the stakeholders? Like what do you say? If someone is listening and they're like, okay, I mean, I'm in your context. I mean this kind of medical hospital environment or institution, this sounds really interesting. I would like to experiment with this. I want to give this a go. What are all the wheels that have to be put in motion? Like who gives approval? Who are the stakeholders? Who needs to sign this off? Who needs to believe in this? How do we sell it? Like where do you even start? So if we can go back to the beginning, what would be some, let's say three to five first steps for someone that's thinking, I'm gonna pitch this. I'm just gonna give this a try in my context. - Absolutely. So I think having one leader champion at least is just critical. So we were very fortunate that in addition to Dr. Tegin who was really the person who first put this idea forth to the network, but unfortunately due to her illness wasn't able to see it really take flight. Our president and chief executive officer, Dr. John Murphy has just been a tireless advocate for getting the teaching academy off the ground. So he came in and said, this is happening. Like it was not a maybe, it was not a should we, it was, this is happening. And he was able to pull together some initial funds through our foundation. I should also just say that we are philanthropically supported. So we operate on a tiny shoestring budget, but we're able to do great things. But having that support of a really visible leader and making that explicit. So he spoke for us as we were made our first call for applications. We recorded a video with him where he shared his support and said, this is important. We want this to happen at New Vance. And so that was invaluable. And he's been an incredible champion ever since. And I think also, without a no-girl cohort, it was really important that one, that it was interprofessional, that we were able to have scholar participants members from across the entire network. So not just one hospital, we had scholars from our entire network and in various different disciplines. So speech language pathologists, we have a pharmacist, the medical librarian, nephrologist, sleep doctor. I mean, we had just very, very diverse. And so each of them have, in turn, been champions as well for the academy moving forward. So it's really been kind of like a chain reaction. And I would say, yeah, like, try things. And this is where it's awesome to work with someone who's so fearless about failing. My colleague, my counterpart, Dr. Skatina, she's really a firm believer of fail fast. So there were some things that we tried in the beginning. And we weren't ready for them. Like our very first year, we tried to launch also a coaching and mentoring program in tandem as we were building the first curriculum. And it just wasn't possible. So we ended up putting that on hold until this very year where we launch our mentoring program. And it's been much, much more successful. So willing to iterate, learn from failures and mistakes. And I connecting with others as well that have done similar things. So there's this amazing organization called the Academy's Collaborative. And it's a professional group for academies and academy-like institutions. And really, they say, if you've seen an academy, you've seen one academy. And that's it. So there's just so much diversity among teaching academies across health professions, institutions across the United States and Canada. So I did a deep dive through the Academy's Collaborative, doing informational interviews. I think probably with 12 to 14 different individuals, what that's practices, what should I do? What do you suggest? What are the pitfalls? And so that's where I didn't see it at the time that I had a community of practice. But I was tapping into that community of practice to learn how to build then this community of practice. And that was so, so invaluable. Yeah. You're already hinted here and there, Beth, into some of the things that you kind of learn. And clearly, there was a lot of experimentation and iteration cycles there. But what were some of the most exciting or maybe curious unexpected lessons things you've seen throughout these past few years as you've building this from the ground up? Is there anything that jumps at you? And it's kind of memorable as a lesson learned. Oh, yeah. I mean, so many lessons learned. I think probably the biggest thing for me as a facilitator, as an educator, has been that I'm not as needed as maybe I think. Like I'm needed for the community. My role is sort of creating the container space, coordination, leadership, some curriculum development, like some of that pieces, of course, it's needed. But also just holding the space for others and giving them the opportunity. Like that's been really something that I've learned. And like how much encouragement people need? I look at these fabulous clinician educators and I'm like, you're literally saving lives every day. And yet like you're wondering if you're academic poster or you're abstract that you've written, they're very, very self-critical. Like the hard-to-mean inner voice is really strong in these high-achieving people. So being able to just sort of encourage folks like, look, you're not the only one that feels this way. Let's look at this objectively. And supporting those. So I think that was a big surprise for me was just the presence of this really critical inner voice. People are truly their own worst critics at times. And so just being like a cheerleader in some ways as well has been, I think, important to do. I didn't realize how much confidence support that some of the scholars would need to be honest with you, 'cause again, they're saving lives every day. They're impacting patients and their learners positively day to day. But many experienced significant self-doubt in Pastor Syndrome was something that came up strongly throughout my research. And so helping sort of normalize this and helping scholars build their sense of self-efficacy, their professional identity has been really, really important and meaningful. - Well, you are needed, see? This is a big thing. This is a big deal. And maybe up to you, 'cause we're approaching the end of the conversation, but I really am curious for myself and for everyone listening. This piece of people don't have time. They don't have time for a community of practice. They don't have time to engage. This comes up a lot with peers other people that are trying to build communities at work, communities, I don't know, in a consultancy firm where people get paid by the hour or with lawyers, et cetera. So it's almost an in-your-context. You already mentioned this fact that these people are seeing patients, they're saving lives, they are tired, they have a lot of things on their plate, they've got stuff to do, they are working in patients, they're also doing research, they're doing tons of things and they're writing and they're doing so many things on top of everything else. And so seeing patients is how the money comes in, right? And when they're not seeing patients, no money comes in. And so, I think I want to go back a bit to some of the insights that you had or intentionality, like how do you design community in that context? Are you taking some decisions very specifically? How do you know what to build for this to be valuable? Like, what are you looking at when you wear those lenses off? These are busy people and we can't abuse your time and we have to be very mindful and intentional about that. How are you pulling this off so successfully? Yeah. Wow. Great question. I mean, from the very, very initial stages, we conducted a needs assessment and that was important to understand sort of the landscape, right? And I would encourage everyone to always do those sort of structured exercises, of conducting a needs assessment, you know, creating like a logic model. I love logic models. I think that this is something that's really, really helpful. Working with some other friends and health professions education, I've done another sort of structured approach to planning new programs. We use the SES, we built the mentoring program. It's just doing a pre-mortem, which is really interesting. So, you know, building out all the possible ways that this could fail and why and identifying those things first and foremost and then building around them, right? So there's some structured techniques that can be used to sort of build for success. But I think, you know, the common denominator for our scholars is that they wanted to become better at what they're doing. Primarily, that's teaching as well as, you know, curriculum development and scholarly research and writing, etc. But they wanted to become better at it. And they wanted to become better together. They wanted a community where other people also felt passionate about teaching. And so that's an important common denominator. And so everything supports that. You know, we've never had a problem recruiting or finding applicants for the teaching academy, especially as we grow bigger and bigger. You know, because we have this wonderful sort of army of folks who, you know, they're just so amazing. I'm thinking back now to some quotes from my dissertation research, you know, and one of the inaugural scholars shared with me, like the teaching academy is really a mindset. Like, what do you mean it's a mindset? You know, it's like, it's become so part of their identity of who they are and how they approach things. So with a spirit of openness, with trying new things, with experimenting. And so, you know, naturally, there's folks that are attracted to that. Naturally, there's folks who are not attracted to that. There are folks who I think would fit under the category of what my first advisor said, like, no, I think this is going to cause burnout, not mitigate symptoms of burnout. And those folks, you know, aren't attracted to be part of this. But what we found in, you know, feedback and our annual reviews and, you know, assessments like that, and certainly in my dissertation research is that scholars who participate feel happier. They feel more fulfilled. They feel like, and this is the real bottom line, they feel like they're making a difference for patient care. And if what they're doing can impact positively patient care and outcomes, that's the Holy Grail. Yeah. That's what everybody's looking for, you know, yes. And their learners as well. It's positively impacting their learners. Yes. It is, I always tell people I work with or sometimes when I get in conversations with other community builders, like, how do we do that? How do we? No one has the time to learn how do we even block their calendars for an hour or a month or an hour and a week? And I always tell them what if you can block their agenda for an hour a week, but in that hour, they take something out of that that helps them save two hours further down the line, right? Or get praise, or become better at something. Or you'd manage to tap into some sort of a very personal need. And that can be very different need to connect, need to give back, need to grow and learn, need to et cetera. Then that's it. Yeah. Then they will come the next time and they will return and they will keep on coming because it's an investment. It's not something you're not taking something from them. You're actually gifting them something or they gifting something to each other, right? In that one hour. Yeah. And I think they've also found like they can really take what they're learning and like literally turn around and apply it the next day. And so that's been important is to be really relevant to their day to day work that they're able to use what they're learning. Try strategies out and see immediate results. That's it. That's it. Yeah. The other thing I would say is like branding and marketing, right? Like we, you know, very early on in maybe silly, but I love swag. And so like having, you know, a logo, creating a logo, creating cool pencils, for instance, you know, like we have this amazing, you know, teaching Academy logo and swag. I can show you. I've got a mug here with. Oh, yeah. This is like the original teaching Academy swag. And people love their stuff. Like and, you know, we had a scholar break his mug early on and he was devastated. He's like, my mom, you know, can I get another one? And so they love displaying the fact that they are teaching Academy scholars. We create a signature tag for their emails. You know, they have a pin that they wear. There's a badge buddy. So every, you know, in healthcare, we all have to wear badges. There's an indicator that says teaching Academy. And so people ask them, Oh, what does that mean? So really creating a buzz around that and, you know, not necessarily spending a ton of money, but just like having a real strong brand presence has been something that has been helpful for us. People are like, Oh, yeah, I've heard about that. I see it on our screensayers on our network computer system, you know, other events that are open beyond the teaching Academy to the larger public at new events have also helped. So monthly lunch and learns that we open to the public. And the academic symposium every year is everyone that crossed the entire network is invited to attend. So it's marketing at the end, right? Like this, almost like the Cevebinaras and where people can come in and get a taste and ask questions and see what this is and this old. Yeah. So I get badges and the logo, etc. I guess what helps in your case is this, you have an application. Like people, people are in or they're out. And so as humans, we have this need to belong and be where the cool kids are. And so if that's the spot where the cool kids hang out, obviously, I want to be there too. There's that I sense a follow, but, you know, like they feel like, you know, but I will say like, yeah, you're in your outage is a competitive application process, but we meet with every scholar who or every applicant who's not accepted as well to offer feedback about their application and what they can do if they'd like to reapply for the next cycle. And we've had a number of scholars actually do that. So who were not accepted their first time around, who, you know, worked a little bit more on their profile, sort of solidified their idea for their scholarly project a bit more. And reapplied and were accepted. So, you know, this is, we think that's really important also providing a clear feedback to those who weren't accepted. You know, we want every single piece of engagement with the teaching academy to feel like they learned something. So even during the application, they're asked to describe a moment that they felt like they were doing really well around one of our six pillars. So maybe a teaching moment, describe a teaching moment that went particularly well that you're proud of and use the Carl method. So a specific framework for framing their achievements. So even if, you know, they decide not to hit submit, they've learned something in doing the application process. And so we try to infuse every single aspect of the teaching academy with an opportunity for learning and transformation. That is gold. I am so glad that I asked this question back because you gave us so much good stuff. I appreciate so much your time. Last question. Super short rapid fire for all the community builders listening. What is one skill that has been very, very helpful for you in this role? One skill that you're using, you're practicing, you're flexing and is supporting you be a community builder nurture. Yeah, I would say reflection, self reflection. So it's so important for us to take care of ourselves to understand what do we need, you know, being able to look at things honestly and seeing, you know, what was the success? What could I have done better than next time? I'm in modeling that as well that self reflection is a key piece of the overall learning cycle. If we think about Colbs experiential learning cycle, you know, reflection is where it's at. That's where the learning really gets baked in. So making structured time in our sessions that we're working with our learners, but also for ourselves to spend time in reflection is really important. Thank you. Beth, you are so generous with your time and your insights. Thank you very much. This was fabulous. And thanks for letting me share. It was just been a pleasure. I learned so much from you and just excited to see what you're doing next. So thanks for letting me be a part of your amazing Mapping Ties project. And if people want to get to chat with you, reach out, connect where can they best do that? Please feel free to send me an email. You can reach me at Beth. [email protected] and that's a new the A-N-C-E-H-E-A-L-T-H dot org. Or you can also reach me by Gmail, Beth, [email protected]. Fabulous. We'll link that in the show notes. Beth, enjoy the beautiful sunny rest of the day, and we'll see you around. Thanks again. Take care. (gentle music)