The Harvard Macy Institute Program for Educators in Health Professions is an ideal place to develop and practice new teaching skills consistent with the current knowledge of experiential learning theory, as well as a place to enhance scholarly expertise and explore organizational leadership. As I found, it is also a place to recognize your personal potential and to help others find theirs by identifying ideas, commitments, and even biases, that knowingly or unknowingly hold us back. Ultimately, this allows us to transform into better versions of our educator and leader selves.

Recently, Louis Pangaro received the 2018 National Board of Medical Examiners Hubbard award. Lou is known for his work developing conceptual frameworks for assessment and developed the RIME framework for clinical assessment of learners in medical education. As Lou is one of the course directors for our ‘Systems Approach to Assessment in Health Professions Education’ course, and a leader in medical education assessment of learners, we thought we’d ask him to explain the RIME Framework, and how it came to be.

Looking for a quick, engaging activity for your course? Try a slightly different approach to using questions that facilitates peer instruction, promotes deeper learning, and allows for knowledge application. Similar to Team-based Learning, this activity can also give student teams an opportunity to provide rationale for their responses while also providing you feedback on how well students are understanding the material.

Since my early years in medical school I have understood that teaching was one of the skills a physician should have. Teaching patients, families, and multi-disciplinary teams is a daily and complex activity. What shall we say then about teaching prospective doctors? Is it a higher calling, an inherent talent impossible to be taught and learned? Or is it a teachable skill itself?

We had a lively discussion during this month’s #HMIChat about disruptive innovation focused on health professions education. We discussed many sustaining innovations as well, and highlighted the difference between the two. For those interested in reading more check out the pre-reading for the chat. Obviously, the @HarvardMacy and #MedEd community at large is eager to innovate, whether it be sustaining or disruptive and quite frankly we need both types!