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113th AAMC Annual Meeting: Leadership Forum Examines Trends, Future Opportunities Plenary Speakers Address Challenges, From Bioterrorism to Health Disparities Roundup from San Francisco: AAMC's 113th Annual Meeting Notes Trends, Concerns, Solutions Medical School Applications May Be On the Rise For the Love of Country: Afghan-American Physicians Rebuild Medical Education in Their Homeland Caring for Community: Loma Linda Medical Students Organize Health, Mentoring Programs Viewpoint: The State of the VHA Is Strong A Word From the President
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2002 AOA Winners: A Showcase of Talent, Enthusiasm for Medical Education
Ralph Jozefowicz, M.D., remembers a piece of advice he received early in his academic medicine career: "A very senior faculty member in our medical school called me into his office and said, Jozefowicz, you teach too much! If you continue teaching this much, you will never be successful!'' Reflecting on this, Dr. Jozefowicz says he didn't take his colleague's advice to heart, and continued doing what gave him the most pleasure: concentrating on the teaching and mentoring aspects of his career as neurology professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. "Basically, I do a lot of what people would construe as 'wasting time,'" says Dr. Jozefowicz. "My office door is always open for every student who wants to come in and discuss his or her problems. Obviously, I need to get work done, but the main purpose of being in the office is to be available to meet with students, residents, and faculty." The time and energy Dr. Jozefowicz has spent in providing his students and residents with a first-rate educational experience has resulted in his being named one of the four winners of the 2002 Robert J. Glaser Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) Award. The award, established by the AOA medical honor society and named after longtime AOA Executive Secretary (and former AAMC Chair) Robert J. Glaser, M.D., recognizes medical school faculty members who have distinguished themselves as outstanding medical student educators. The winners receive a $10,000 award, and each awardee's nominating institution receives $5,000 for teaching activities. In addition, the winner's nominating AOA chapter gets a stipend of $1,000 to be used for its activities. This year marks the award's 50th anniversary. Much like the other medical educators honored this year, Dr. Jozefowicz's curriculum vitae reflect his commitment to the teaching profession. In addition to working as a professor at the University of Rochester's Department of Neurology and Medicine, he is also associate chair for education and neurology, and director of the school's Neurology Residency Training Program. He directed the reorganization of the entire neurology curriculum at the university, and developed a course, titled "The Mind, Brain, and Behavior," that has received national attention. Over the past two years, Dr. Jozefowicz has been invited to medical schools across the country and Canada to review their pre-clinical neural science curricula. "There are four characteristics that effective medical educators need to have," explains Dr. Jozefowicz. "First, they have to be experts in their field. Secondly, they must be passionate about their work. Thirdly, they have to enjoy teaching, and lastly, they have to have an interest in their students as individuals." Having fun with your work
The passion of an educator helped inspire Faith Fitzgerald, M.D., a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, and another 2002 AOA award winner, to eventually become an educator herself. She still recalls the day in 1967 when, as a second-year medical student at the University of California, San Francisco, she saw a professor of medicine having so much fun in his job that she thought to herself, "If I could have as much fun as this doctor is having, then all would be worthwhile." She had just been assigned to an emergency room for one of the show-and-tell sessions second-year medical students usually get to participate in how the ER works. "Unfortunately, on the day I was assigned, there was only one patient there, a woman who had a benign breast lump," Dr. Fitzgerald explains. "It was certainly not an emergency, but since there was no one else there we had to concentrate on her." Hibbard Williams, M.D., who eventually became dean at UC-Davis School of Medicine, was the professor assigned to the emergency room at the time. Dr. Williams came in the virtually empty emergency room with three medical students and "by enthusiasm and extrapolation," says Dr. Fitzgerald, started going down the list of possible reasons for the woman's breast lump. "He made an hour of such adventure and romance," she recalls. "I was so taken with his enthusiasm and joy, and his ability to extend himself to all possibilities and use the smallest clues and large clues to come to differential diagnosis, that it was overwhelming." More than 30 years later, Dr. Fitzgerald has in turn inspired many people herself. She has come to be known by her peers as a "superb clinician educator," and has dedicated her career to cultivating the next generation of physicians and scientists. She is a well-published author and a much sought-after speaker. "I was in private practice for a very short time and remember that the reason why I didn't want to pursue it anymore was because, in spite of the gratifications of taking care of patients, I kept wanting to share it," says Dr. Fitzgerald. "I would turn around and there wouldn't be any students there. I simply love the moment when the light of recognition goes on, or there's this kind of 'aha!' that occurs when you discover something that someone else who is there with you also suddenly realizes. I live for that!" Working with students has gotten even more fulfilling over the years, she says, arguing that today's students are "even better" than the ones from a few decades ago. "I survey the first-year class every year, and ask them how many of them were actually discouraged from going into medicine by physicians, and usually about 85 percent of them raise their hand," she says. "They tell me that they've been told that there would be no money, no power, no autonomy of the sort that used to drive people into medicine, and that they would go into tremendous debt in order to accomplish this. All of these negatives are true, but they can't do otherwise; they have to be physicians. "I think two things have happened: one, we're getting a number of vocational physicians; people who just have to be doctors. Two, those who were going into medicine for other motives, such as self-aggrandizement or personal enrichment, are falling away. This will probably be the one wonderful thing that comes out of this chaos of current medical economics practice." An innovator at Georgetown
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Aviad Haramati, Ph.D. Georgetown University |
Aviad Haramati, Ph.D., another AOA award winner, agrees. "A lot of the perceived awards of medicine are not what they used to be, especially in terms of finances, so the people who are coming into the field now are much more dedicated and committed to a service profession," says Dr. Haramati. "I never cease to be amazed by how bright, energetic, inquisitive, and insightful the students that I get are."
Dr. Haramati has been a teacher and the director of a human physiology course at Georgetown for more than a decade. Through the course, he introduced new formats for faculty-student interaction, such as small-group tutorials and problem-solving workshops. He is now the principal investigator of a $1.7 million National Institutes of Health grant to integrate complementary and alternative medicine into the Georgetown University School of Medicine curriculum.
"Dr. Haramati is one of the most innovative and effective teachers of basic science at Georgetown University School of Medicine," Georgetown's Dean for Medical Education Stephen Ray Mitchell wrote in his nomination of Haramati for the AOA award. "His presentations are noted for being challenging and thought-provoking, yet laced with humor, and are extremely well-received by students. Dr. Haramati has received every teaching honor that this institution has to offer."
Dr. Haramati's approach to this profession explains his success and popularity. "My job in the lecture hall is to inspire and excite the students enough so that they want to go home and study the material," he says. "The most gratifying thing is the comment I get from students when they say, 'You know, you made the kidney exciting.' My students are smart, so I never worry about whether or not they will master the material; I know they will. The question is, are they excited or not?"
One of the challenges professors face nowadays, says Dr. Haramati, is deciding what materials to cover in lectures and what pieces of information to sacrifice. "We have to deal with an exploding scientific world," he explains. "There are so many more things to talk about nowadays than there were just a few years ago, and the challenge we have as faculties is to figure out what we need to convey to students, what they really need to know to prepare themselves for their service profession. They can't possibly know everything, so we have to prioritize."
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Lewis First, M.D. University of Vermont |
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Lewis First, M.D., professor and chair of the department of pediatrics at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and also one of the 2002 AOA winners, says that today's explosion of scientific knowledge requires educators and students to work as partners in the learning process. "Information can no longer be spoon-fed, or given over in large handouts or large group lectures," says Dr. First.
"There is too much information that needs to be learned and located. So it's wonderful to see both students and teachers working together to figure out how to master the information effectively. Students today are more motivated to recognize that they can't know everything, can't be taught everything, and need to work with teachers to figure out the best way to learn."
Dr. First has developed a national reputation for helping both medical students and experienced faculty improve their teaching skills. He is the author of sought-after teaching modules, manuals, and workshops, and is credited with the development of an interdisciplinary generalist curriculum for first- and second-year medical students. His teaching isn't limited to academia, however. "One of the most interesting and creative outlets for me as a teacher is the education of the public through my work with radio and television," Dr. First says.
Several times a week, Dr. First dispenses his pediatric wisdom to parents through a radio program he hosts at a country music station in Burlington, Vt. The program, titled "First with Kids," is also aired as a two-minute video piece that appears on the city's ABC television affiliate.
"I can probably reach and teach more families through the use of media, and have fun doing it, than I ever could despite my desire to educate each and every patient that I see in the office," he says. Dr. First has done almost 300 radio programs over the past five years, on topics ranging from major pediatric illnesses, safety, and prevention tips, to other light-hearted topics such as "how to break your child's nose-picking habit."
In addition to working as full-time faculty and as a radio and television personality, Dr. First is also heavily involved in community service and national initiatives. He established a "without- walls" children's hospital to meet the needs of children and communities throughout the region. Staying involved in this type of initiative is a crucial aspect of being a good teacher and effective role model, says Dr. First.
"When students see professors who are actively involved in national work, community work, and taking care of individual patients, they see models for becoming physicians in which physicians can be leaders, clinician educators, and investigators capable of solving problems to better the health care of children and families."
By Suria Santana
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