This blog originally appeared The Medical Educator Blog on June 13, 2017 and is republished here with permission http://www.themedicaleducator.com/blog/950165/all-a-twitter-5-tips-to-build-your-twitter-presence-as-a-medical-educator

A few years ago, my husband noted that more and more professional conferences had hashtags and suggested it might be wise for the two of us as early career academics to grow our professional Twitter presence. Admittedly, it took me a while to get on board as I’m not always an “early adopter” and I wasn’t quite sure how using Twitter would benefit me professionally. At times, the constant feed of new tweets seemed overwhelming and I wasn't sure who to follow or what to tweet about. With the added challenge of a 140-character limit I felt like I was learning a new language! As I became more and more engaged – and more users started following me – my confidence grew. After time and practice I'm now connected with medical educators from all over the world, and I recognize that Twitter offers an expansive network of professionals and colleagues at my fingertips for guidance and expertise. Since the first steps are often the hardest to take, I have compiled a few tips and tricks you can use to make the most of your Twitter presence as a medical educator.

Why is the most powerful word in education. Asking why is a mark of curiosity, the strongest intrinsic motivating factor. It forces people to find answers and ultimately ask more questions. It drives people to endlessly pursue knowledge. It, along with its cousins what and how, have driven scientists and researchers for centuries. What seeks to identify the element responsible for a given phenomenon. How is asked to better understand the processes that underpin a phenomenon. But why is the question that is asked when people want to utilize critical thinking. Why does not seek simple answers, rather it asks a fundamental characteristic that entrains judgement, reasoning, and logic.  Why beckons itself for someone with wisdom, experience and insight to bring reason and logic out of uncertainty. 

The Peer Observation of Teaching Handbook

A group of faculty developers have come together to carry on a tradition started by Steve Davis, to highlight faculty development resources and strategies each month.

This month we are highlighting a wonderful resource available in MedEdPortal, The Peer Observation of Teaching Handbook written by Lori R. Newman, David H. Roberts, and Richard M. Schwartzstein from Harvard Medical School (2012).  We are also hoping to extend an engaging conversation in Twitter at #MedEdPearls. 

The following blog has been co-authored by the CareForward Team of Senthil Rajasekaran, Lauren Mazzurco, Christine Matson, Don Robison, Anca Dobrian, Marta Ambrozewicz, Raja Koteeswaran, Mekbib Gemeda, Cindy Cadieux, Carrie Elzie, Arun Mohanram and April Pace

It seems like American Healthcare has been in “crisis mode” since 1900s. Despite so many advances, little has changed in controlling cost and improving value and health outcomes. Even though there is plenty of evidence to suggest that clinical care at its best contributes to only 20% of patient health outcomes and a whopping 80% is determined by socioeconomic and behavioral factors, little is done in medical education to address the 80%. Recently we are witnessing a welcome trend, where undergraduate (UME) and graduate medical education (GME) are seen as part of this solution. At Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) we have implemented our new CareForward curriculum to teach cost, value, and health system sciences in the UME. Realizing the challenges in effectively integrating these complex topics in UME, our team at EVMS has created a set of virtual families, members of which will be represented in the clinical cases that are used in the UME curriculum. These virtual families represent diverse patient populations (e.g., age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, culture, belief system, literacy level, socioeconomic status and geography), and introduce variables such as veteran affairs, family dynamics, financial turbulence, health equity/disparity, roles within a care delivery team, access to community resources, interactions of organizations and complexities of care in specific patient populations. Each organ system module and clerkship will use longitudinal clinical cases that are drawn from the virtual families.

Please note that this blog was originally posted on www.christenseninstitute.org on May 4, 2017

People use the term “Disruptive Innovation” to mean a lot of different things, but it actually has a very specific definition. Disruptive Innovation is not the kind of innovation that makes good products better. It’s the kind that takes a product that’s historically been so expensive and complicated or inconvenient that few people can use it, and transforms it into one that’s so simple and affordable that a great many can do so. Examples include TurboTax tax preparation software, which disrupted accountants, and Netflix, which disrupted retail video stores.

Just like how it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a community to raise a tweet chat.

 On the morning of May 3rd, I checked Twitter for the announcement of the May Harvard Macy (HMI) tweet chat. I typed in #hmichat and right at the top of the results I found the announcement. I read on - the session would be led by Andrew Linn, Brent Thoma, and Zineb Nouns. I had no idea who these people were, but that's the great thing about HMI chat.

Since the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) launched the IHI Open School in 2008, more than 1,500 universities and hospitals have integrated the IHI Open School online courses into curricula and training programs to bring essential skills in quality improvement and patient safety to students, trainees, and all levels of staff. Based on lessons and advice from hundreds of educators, the new IHI Open School Faculty Guide: Best Practices in Curriculum Integration offers a roadmap to building a quality and safety training program with help from the Open School courses.

During medical school, I spent hours scribing lectures, paragraphs from text books, and tutorial notes. Writing repetitively. Scraping to learn and retain every fact my brain could hold. Oh, how I wish I had known about visual note taking back then.

I discovered this form of learning support, also known as sketch-noting or info-doodling, about two years ago. During a meeting, I watched my Department Head scribble and scrawl all over a page. The upshot was a hut on an island and an isolated palm tree, which did not mean much to me, but for him it represented the essence of what was being discussed. I asked what he was doing. He told me about sketch-noting and pointed me in the direction of a couple of well-known authors in the field.

Our domestic and global health delivery systems face significant challenges to providing all of our patients with quality health care. Medical education plays an important role in improving health equity. The Cambridge Health Alliance Internal Residency program has developed a required social medicine and research based health advocacy course to address a gap in medical training. The program believes that physician advocacy is a central tenet of medical professionalism.

Interprofessional education (IPE) is a hot topic right now, but building collaborations can be challenging. Let’s face it, it’s especially challenging in an academic model where each professional school has its own priorities, funding structures, and schedules. Faculty who have a passion for building IPE are aware of these challenges but will also quickly tell you how rewarding addressing these challenges can be! Simply put, designing IPE will be one of the most exhausting, rewarding, and all-consuming innovations you can do as an educator. In this blog, I will share one strategy of involving students in the development of an IPE population health course. 

HMI: Dr. Rose, please tell us why you selected the topic of Health Disparities, Diversity, and Inclusion for your new book?                                   

Dr. Rose: As a young graduate student at Yale University pursuing a master of public health degree in the mid-1980s, I stumbled upon a topic that I was unfamiliar with— namely, health disparities in terms of race and ethnicity. I was taking a number of core courses, and within most there was mention of a gap between the health statuses of Black and White people in the United States. I reflected upon this issue and decided it would be a key area of interest for me, and indeed it has been to this day.

One of my mentors in medical school in Egypt had a coffee mug that reads “To teach is to touch lives forever”. That was a couple of decades ago but I still remember it vividly. I think overall I have been thought of as a “good teacher” by students, peers and course directors but until recently I personally had no clue what “good teacher” really meant.