It is 5 pm on a Friday in the pre-doctoral dental clinic at your institution. A procedure has taken 5 hours, when it seemingly could have taken 90 minutes. Frustrated and exhausted, the student cannot seem to apply the content that they have learned in the classroom into real life. As an instructor you can’t help but think “What could we, as dental educators, have done to prevent this?”

“OK, so we think you have pleurisy. Your D-dimer was negative. You should take ibuprofen, rest and stay hydrated, then follow-up with your primary care physician. Any questions?”

My daughter reached for her discharge papers as she slid off the exam table and we thanked the staff as we made our way out of the urgent care part of a local emergency department.

She was eighteen at the time, a college freshman studying sociology. She called me to tell me she had been experiencing two days of pleuritic chest pain and felt a little short of breath. Because our logical, medical brains turn into parent brains when our child is sick, I dropped everything I was doing to go and see her. She looked fine, the pain was probably just musculoskeletal; she is a ballet dancer and these minor aches and pains are common. But, I thought, “What about a pulmonary embolism?” “Not likely” I thought, “but I’m here so let’s go get it checked out”.

Working through the online pre-course materials for the Harvard Macy course “Health Care Education 2.0 – Transforming your Teaching for the Digital Age” we could not help but wonder if technology has evolved to the point that courses such as this might soon be delivered in an entirely online format. As a busy health professions educator, perhaps this thought has occurred to you as well, as you pack your suitcase for yet another flight, set your away message again, and put your projects, clinics, patients or meetings on a temporary hold to attend professional conferences or courses. If you teach in the classroom, then you may have received similar feedback from your own students such as our favorite, “Next time, can this session just be available online? I prefer to watch lectures at night on 2x speed.”

Emotion and learning have been viewed largely as separate entities, often with the role of emotions in learning (e.g. anxiety) as hindering. However, recent research has pointed to the interdependence between emotions and learning, suggesting that emotions are important, and perhaps even central to the cognitive learning process. Biologically, emotions are powerful motivators of learning because they activate brain mechanisms (e.g amygdala) that originally evolved to manage our basic survival. When reflecting on past educational experiences, the best teacher most quickly recalled is usually one with whom an emotional bond existed. To maximize student understanding and transfer of educational experiences into real-world skills and careers, medical educators must find ways to leverage the emotional aspects of learning by:

Implicit biases are associations between different concepts that develop over time, and influence us outside of our conscious awareness. The topic of implicit bias has entered mainstream conversation, and is the subject of discourse and debate. Some believe that implicit biases can be eliminated, and individuals can become consciously unbiased. Others suggest that implicit biases are impossible to change, and that attempting to recognize or manage biases is an exercise in futility.

Can we break our biased habits?