Faculty Factory

Kathryn Burtson, MD, MHPE, FACP, is our guest on the Faculty Factory Podcast this week for a look into academic coaching and individualized learning plans, part of a broader effort to move graduate medical education forward.

Dr. Burtson is a first-time guest on our show and a colonel in the United States Air Force Medical Corps. She is Director of Medical Education at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Associate Professor of Medicine at Wright State and Uniformed Services Universities, and Vice Chair of Faculty Affairs at the Wright State Department of Medicine.

Here are the links to her articles mentioned at the start of this podcast:

Since our Faculty Factory podcast's launch in 2019, we have had the honor of interviewing some of the world's most impressive people, with a constant recurring theme being that these folks know how to safeguard their time.

In this Faculty Factory best-of compilation episode, we're diving into some quick-hitting time management tips packed into a quick 15-minute broadcast with some of the most powerful mic-drop segments in this show's 7+ year history.

Three-time management experts in academic health are featured this week, with clips from the following episodes:

Themes covered throughout include goal setting, prioritizing, list-making, saying no, and how to face the items on your list that you dread most (or simply eliminate them if that’s an option).

"Time is ultimately our most precious commodity, so if you are saying yes to certain projects, it eventually means you will be saying no to something else," said Dr. Sikder.

Drs. Yousem and Vogel discuss the importance of prioritization, particularly in the context of Stephen Covey's (author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) Time Management Matrix, which is mentioned in-depth in both Dr. Yousem's and Dr. Vogel's clips.

In the final stretch before retirement, the anxiety about an impending change in identity can be palpable, but Angela Sharkey, MD, has a lot of encouragement for folks who are struck with those feelings as they approach the closing years of a career in academic health.

She joins the Faculty Factory Podcast this week for her third appearance and a triumphant return to our show.

Dr. Sharkey is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She had a multidecade career in academic medicine featuring patient care, health professions education, and clinical research. She has held leadership roles at four different academic institutions.

She retired in 2025 and continues to present at a national level on strategic career planning, conflict management, and other critical faculty development topics.

Dr. Sharkey began to think about stepping away from her career in a full-time capacity and immediately reflected on how it would impact her “identity.” When we introduce ourselves in social situations, we tend to say our name, title, and institution, and when we retire, we take a step away from that identity.

As an accomplished thought leader in career planning, Dr. Sharkey approached retirement through the lens of how she teaches others to make strategic career decisions.

"With retirement, I thought I should be advising myself about the strategy of planning for retirement around my purpose, my passion and my people, to best move forward into this really exciting time," she said.

Daniel S. Eiferman, MD, MBA, FACS, Professor of Surgery at The Ohio State University in Columbus, joins us to discuss his new book, “Cut Open: A Surgeon's Stories of Loss, Resilience, and Growth,” and to explore some of the most important leadership skills in medicine you won't learn in formal training, this week on the Faculty Factory Podcast.

Learn about the book: https://www.amazon.com/Cut-Open-Surgeons-Stories-Resilience-ebook/dp/B0GGZFD4HT 

Dr. Eiferman shares the leadership skills medical training often leaves out:

Daniel Shapiro, PhD, returns to the Faculty Factory Podcast this week for a conversation on what really separates thriving academic leaders from those who quietly wash out of their roles.

Today's interview is based on a talk Dr. Shapiro recently gave for Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM), titled "Chutes and Ladders." After conducting hundreds of 360 evaluations for chairs, institute directors, and deans, and watching what happened to those leaders afterward, Dr. Shapiro started noticing patterns that rarely come up in typical leadership conversations.

He breaks these behaviors into three tiers:

Dr. Shapiro currently serves as Senior Partner in Performance Transformation and leads the Chartis Center for Burnout Solutions, where he and his team assist leaders of multi-hospital systems with efforts to reduce burnout and the turnover of high-value people.

He previously served as the Vice Dean for Faculty and Administrative Affairs at the Penn State College of Medicine (Hershey).

Dr. Shapiro first joined us in February 2019. At the time it was the first ever interview released on this podcast and our second episode overall. It focused on factors that influence the productivity, success, happiness, and overall well-being of faculty. He returned in 2022 for an in-depth chat about data's role in advancing the careers of faculty. You can learn more about both those episodes:

You can get in contact with Dr. Shapiro via email: [email protected] and he is available to follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drdanshaps/.

We're joined by first-time guest Lacey W. Heinsberg, PhD, RN, on this week's episode of the Faculty Factory Podcast to examine many of the ethical considerations surrounding the widespread use of generative AI tools (ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, etc.).

Dr. Heinsberg is Assistant Professor of Health Promotion & Development in the School of Nursing, and of Human Genetics in the School of Public Health, at the University of Pittsburgh. She also serves as Co-Director of the Genomics of Patient Outcomes HUB in the School of Nursing.

It feels difficult to opt out of using generative AI without there being serious consequences to our careers, yet as we learn in today's episode, it's a deeply personal choice whether to use it and how much to use it.

Personal Code of Conduct

Dr. Heinsberg created her own personal code of conduct about using generative AI and discussed this in the interview today. Some of its themes include: "Enhance it, don't replace it" and staying aligned with her own institution's AI use policy.

There is almost a certain slippery slope facing us all when it comes to an overreliance on generative AI. Writing is thinking, so if AI is writing for us, are we thinking more deeply? Is this harming our critical thinking?

"When does trust but verify become ‘why bother using it at all?", she said.

Broaching Tough Questions

No one has all the answers to this, but it is important to be discussing this with your teams and to embrace these tough questions. Other recurring themes in this episode include:

If you're not sure where to get started on your code of conduct policies, or if you have any other questions, you can reach out to her directly via email: [email protected].

Mandy J. Hill, DrPH, MPH, HIVPCP, is a first-time guest on the Faculty Factory who is highly aware of the unique challenges leaders face. She joins us this week to explore a critical yet often overlooked issue: the toxic feeling of a need to overperform in this field.

Dr. Hill currently serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Population Health and Health Disparities, and Centennial Chair in Preventive Medicine and Community Health, in the School of Public and Population Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB).

Overperforming is frequently normalized because faculty are conditioned to exceed expectations rather than simply meet them. But "when that becomes the norm, you can create a toxic condition," as Dr. Hill points out in the interview's opening moments.

“If you are an early-stage investigator without mentors and champions willing to bring you into that ‘winning team,’ the default way of thinking is to do more,” Dr. Hill said.

Overperforming is quickly becoming (if not already) the baseline in academia. It is the overwhelming reality of the culture, so what can be done?

Autonomy and investing in ourselves are the only paths forward, and choosing when enough is enough has to be implemented or we risk creating a profession that no one will want to enter.

This week on the Faculty Factory Podcast, we're exploring overcoming adversity and stressful times for a very special "best of" episode.

The snippets from today's podcast focus on viewing your career as a marathon, staying positive through unimaginable circumstances, and embracing a mindset of humility through leadership, teambuilding and mentorship over the course of your career in academic health.

We're featuring important highlights from three episodes in our archive:

We start out hearing from Dr. Skorton, who reflects on his own approach to overcoming the persistent waves of adversity he must address while leading the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

After that, we hear from Dr. Al Ammary, who shares how he turned a vicious and unprovoked physical attack into a source of positivity, with a take-home message of staying positive no matter what.

We close with Dr. Fivush. She outlines crucial tips for building a team to get things done and chats about why working on your career is a long-term process, a marathon and not a sprint. She also touches on how staying focused and resilient through the inevitable ups and downs of a career is a must.

Lauren Maggio, PhD, MS(LIS), Editor-in-Chief of MedEdPORTAL, visits the Faculty Factory this week for a comprehensive look at the value of submitting to this open-access, peer-reviewed publication and why utilizing its resources throughout your career is a must.

In addition to her role with MedEdPORTAL, Dr. Maggio is a Professor and the Director of Research in the Department of Medical Education at the University of Illinois College of Medicine.

She also serves on the editorial boards of Academic Medicine and Perspectives on Medical Education.

Founded in 2005, MedEdPORTAL is the Association of American Medical Colleges' journal of teaching and learning.

"MedEdPORTAL is a diamond open access journal. And what that means is that not only can everyone around the world read what's in MedEdPORTAL for no charge, there's also no charge for you to publish in MedEdPORTAL. So there are no fees for the authors and for the readers. Which to me, as someone who came up in information science and open access, is incredibly important," Dr. Maggio said.

MedEdPORTAL also supports the creative commons approach to protecting the intellectual property of those who are published, while allowing others to utilize its value.

"We use Creative Commons licenses, which ensure that you have your copyright, that you will get credit for your work, but you are allowing others to reuse your work and modify it for their own context. Because at the end of the day we want our colleagues around the world to be able to take those off the shelf and put them into play in their classroom," Dr. Maggio added.

This week on the Faculty Factory Podcast, David Niesel, PhD, tackles one of the most underexplored questions in academic medicine: do you actually know how to be happy outside of your career? It's a provocative starting point, but one that gets at something real in a broader discussion on being strategic when approaching retirement and transitions for leaders in academic health.

"Not everybody is ready for retirement at the same time," Dr. Niesel said, "and that question of readiness sits at the heart of this conversation."

Over the course of his career, Dr. Niesel rose through the ranks of academic leadership, serving as Vice Dean for the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Department Chairman, Dean, and ultimately as the Chief Research Officer at University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB).

He retired from full-time employment in 2021 and continues as an adjunct professor.

He also co-hosts Medical Discovery News, a weekly radio show that recently surpassed 1,000 episodes and publishes a 500-word column each week. You can find out more and tune in here: https://www.medicaldiscoverynews.com/

Dr. Niesel makes the case that skills you've built over decades don't disappear when you step away from the institution. They remain in demand, and that's exactly why intentionality matters. You can't afford to live this next stage by default.