At the Other End of the Speculum

Ever wondered about the benefits of coaching, or how to incorporate coaching in your work with mentees and trainees? Dan Dangler, an executive coach in the BILH Leadership Development Program, gave a fantastic presentation to the BIDMC Academy on how each of us can implement the principles of coaching in our work. I share the highlights of his work here.

A complete recording of Dan's session can be found at the BIDMC Academy website.

In this episode, I provide a brief summary of the highlights of Drs. Jason Freed and Jonathan Berry's presentation to the BIDMC Academy in how Office 365 can make our lives easier, from scheduling meetings seamlessly to sending emails at a scheduled time. 

A recording of the full presentation can be found at the Academy website.

When facing challenging decisions, how do we make the best decision for ourselves? We do it by thinking through what is our purpose, what are our values, and what we need to succeed. In this episode, I describe how I ultimately made a decision for myself that reflected my values and purpose. 

There are times when we are at a crossroads in our professional lives, and what we do (or don't do)  can be instrumental in determining our next steps. Taking these next steps can be extremely challenging, though! In this episode, I talk about how I felt paralyzed when faced with the prospect of making difficult decisions about my career,  and what I did to overcome that fear.

Academia can have an unrelenting pace sometimes, between being busy with clinical work and our scholarly pursuits. That pace can feel especially demoralizing if we receive failures or face challenges, because you cannot help but wonder--is this what I'm meant to be doing? I talk with Dr. Sara McKinney on navigating the academic grind, having your hype people, and focusing on moments of gratitude. 

We all know the benefits of mentorship: increased chances of promotion and publication, a role model to help guide us in our careers, and a senior physician who can help us avoid pitfalls. But how do we find a mentor? And can we only have one? Where does this unicorn mentor exist? Give me 5 minutes, and I'll walk you through how to find a mentor in this short podcast!

The Takeaway:
How Do You Ask Someone to Mentor You?​
The mentor wants to know:

• Why me?​
• Will this be easy for me?​

So tell them--why them and make it easy for them! Sample email below from a cold call email I sent to a senior physician at a different institution!

I am the director of our resident colposcopy clinic and would love to connect with you about how to grow our clinic, maximize learning opportunities, and how I can pursue research opportunities within the clinic. Would you have some time in the next few weeks to connect?​

Failure is inevitable in our careers--but it doesn't have to be a career stopper. Here, Drs. Gangadharan and Graham discuss how they engaged in radical acceptance and framework shifts to make the most of their failures. 

The transition from trainee to faculty can seem daunting for many of us. Unlike clinical training, where we are taught all the relevant clinical knowledge and procedures we will need to become successful physicians, no one teaches us how to thrive as a faculty member in academia. Our guests today identified that need and have created a workshop, titled CORE2, to teach us how to have a flourishing academic career. Please join me in welcoming Drs. Nelson, Martin and Mallin to the show today.  

It’s happened to all of us: we have this great idea that we’re so excited about, and we know that this is going to be the best research project ever...and then life gets in the way. Our clinical work spills into nights, evenings, and weekends, or a family member becomes ill, or we go away to attend a conference or go on vacation, or, really any other myriad number of events that can derail our focus on research.  

So how do we keep on track with our research, and how do we move our projects forward? 

Failure is often perceived as something shameful, as a personal deficiency, as the end of our career or aspirations. But what if our framework and our perspective on failure shifted? What if failure wasn't an ending point, but rather a beginning? In this podcast, I speak with Drs. Sidhu Gangadharan and Kelly Graham on shifting the framework around failure and what we can learn from failures--both personal and professional--to grow.