In celebration of the Harvard Macy Institute’s 30th anniversary, this blog & podcast series honors the remarkable individuals who have shaped and supported our community over the years. These accomplished educators, leaders, and champions of health professions education have contributed to the institute’s enduring legacy. Through their leadership, innovation, and commitment to advancing education, they continue to inspire and guide future generations. Join us as we highlight their journeys, achievements, and reflections on the impact of HMI on their professional lives and the wider global community. 

This episode of the Harvard Macy Institute podcast features Dr. Terry Wolpaw, a nationally recognized leader and innovator in medical education. She shares her journey from clinician to educationalist, highlighting the importance of shifting from a teacher-centered to a learner-centered approach. 

Dr. Wolpaw discusses her experiences at Case Western Reserve and Penn State College of Medicine, where she led major curriculum changes. Key to her success, she says, was the ability to articulate a vision, assemble a strong team, and foster an environment of adaptive thinking. 

She also reflects on the challenges of leading change and the importance of knowing when to step back and let go. This episode offers valuable insights for health professional educators at any stage of career who are navigating the complexities of medical education and curriculum design. 

Terry Wolpaw has served as the vice dean for educational affairs at Penn State College of Medicine where she oversaw undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education. She has also served as the associate dean for curricular affairs at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Among her many accomplishments was working to secure two five-year AMA grant awards at Penn State, both envisioning and promoting health system science as a core component of curricular design. She received one of the first American College of Rheumatology Clinician Scholar Educator career development awards, which catalyzed her interest in student-centered learning. Her educational scholarship has focused on the expression of students' clinical reasoning and uncertainties. She developed the SNAPPS technique for learners’ case presentations to preceptors, which is used with medical students, residents and physician assistant students both nationally and internationally. Dr. Wolpaw is an alumna of the Program for Educators in Health Professions and Leading Innovation in Health Care and Education. Since then, she has served as faculty in the Program for Educators in Health Professions. In 2005, she played a key role in introducing sessions focused on posters and abstracts. This focus soon expanded into the broader theme of the Educator as a Scholar. This theme remains an integral part of the program today.

In celebration of the Harvard Macy Institute’s 30th anniversary, this blog & podcast series honors the remarkable individuals who have shaped and supported our community over the years. These accomplished educators, leaders, and champions of health professions education have contributed to the institute’s enduring legacy. Through their leadership, innovation, and commitment to advancing education, they continue to inspire and guide future generations. Join us as we highlight their journeys, achievements, and reflections on the impact of HMI on their professional lives and the wider global community. 

 In this episode of the podcast, HMI Director Dr. Sarah Wood reflects on what the 30th anniversary means to her, and the ways that the HMI community is celebrating this milestone. Our anniversary series will feature people and ideas from the HMI community, taking a deep dive into their stories and lessons learned.  

Sarah has served as the Director of the Harvard Macy Institute since May 2023. Previously, she was the Vice Dean for Medical Education at the Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University. A scholar in the HMI Educators Program in 2015, Sarah subsequently remained deeply engaged with the institute, supporting at least two scholars annually from FAU to participate in HMI programs. 

In this podcast Vic speaks with Martin Pusic, Bill Cutrer, and Elissa Hall about their article “Educating for Adaptive Expertise: Case Examples Along the Medical Education Continuum.” 

What do we mean by adaptive expertise? Our discussion starts with some definitions and examples, including: Routine procedural approaches, plus creative innovative ones, when the situation calls for it.” This capacity is critical in a healthcare environment brimming with complexity.

How do we educate for adaptive expertise? Our guests suggested 4 instructional strategies, including: Developing deep conceptual understanding, exposure to meaningful variation, emphasis on productive struggle and discovery, and metacognitive strategizing. They drew upon the Master Adaptive Learner conceptual model.

We worked through the practicalities of this kind of education in the undergraduate, postgraduate (Emergency Medicine) and continuing professional development educational contexts. This is not easy! Our guests explained how they have worked through various barriers and constraints to realize the opportunities for fostering adaptive expertise in our healthcare professionals.

Happy listening!

In this podcast Vic speaks with Justin Kreuter, Patricia Tran, and Teresa Chan about ‘Social Media, Networking, Community and the Human Connection’ We recorded the conversation live during  week 6 of the 2023 Harvard Macy program - Transforming your Teaching using Technology. In a metacognitive move, we hoped our podcast conversation would illustrate some of the points we made in the conversation – “the medium is the message”!

Our discussion started with a recap of the week 6 session. This included a self-assessment by scholars on their current professional social media engagement, a wonderful precis of the various social media platforms by Patricia Tran, and group work on social media dilemmas for health professions educators. The podcast conversation explored these themes, with a focus on the different roles in which that health professions educators might be using social media and online engagement – as teachers, as institutional leaders, and as faculty developers. We finished with a deeper dive on podcasting, and a shout out to own Harvard Macy Institute podcast.

Happy listening!

In this podcast Vic speaks with Teresa Chan about ‘digital presence’ - our online personas – and about the opportunities to disseminate our scholarship via online platforms. We recorded the conversation live at the 2022 Harvard Macy program - Transforming your Teaching using Technology. In a metacognitive move, we hoped our podcast conversation would illustrate some of the points we made in the conversation – “the medium is the message”!

We started with Teresa’s website, and reflected on the choices she made in establishing this as her online ‘homebase,’ referencing Michael Hyatt’s conceptual framework and book Platform. We talked about the process of curating such as website as a digital portfolio, and the practicalities, such as hosting on Wix or Squarespace. Teresa talked about how she got interested in online presence and the encouragement of mentors like Jonathan Sherbino from KeyLime podcast.

Our conversation turned to Teresa’s article Social Media and the 21st Century scholar (one of the pre-readings for the Transforming your Teaching using Technology course). In this piece, Teresa and her co-authors offer 2 personal case studies of how to use social media for education, scholarship and health advocacy. In our further conversation Teresa talked about the ‘moral imperative of getting great science out there,’ and we walked through an example of how she might disseminate the messages in an article accepted for publication. Twitter features heavily in Teresa’s dissemination strategies, but we also considered the opportunities of other platforms - Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

We finished with a deeper dive on podcasting, including Teresa’s own MacPFD Spark podcast, and our Harvard Macy Institute podcast. Our ‘live audience’ on Zoom joined the conversation with questions from the chat, and we talked about podcast length, audio recording, and how to listen…

Thanks to the faculty team and scholars who joined our conversation, and to Teresa Chan for sharing her wealth of experience.

Assumption: Something we take to be true without proof. This simple definition belies the complexity of how our assumptions drive our behavior. Some assumptions are explicit (and we are aware of them), but most are implicit; biases and beliefs under our awareness but still powerfully influencing our actions.

Our assumptions about teaching and learning might require considering some fundamental questions: What is learning? (informative/transformative); What is the difference between teaching and learning? What is the role of a teacher? (Expert? Guide? Coach? Co-learner) Goal of educational institutions? (carry on traditions/make change) In practice, we want to be principle-driven vs. defaulting to formats we are familiar with.

In this episode we speak with Liz Gaufberg and Shalice McKnight about ‘assumptions’, particularly our assumptions about teaching and learning.

In our conversation, Shalice and Liz share personal and professional stories of reflection on their assumptions. We discuss core elements of the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Educators in the Health Professions that support this, including the Step Back consultation method in project groups, and Liz’s own sessions in the program. We talk about humble inquiry, the power of listening, and taking just a moment when we think ‘WTF’. (thank you Jenny Rudolph)

Happy listening!

How do we train and transform our teams and our systems for better patient care in the 21st century? What’s the role of simulation, of interprofessional learning, and of integrating education with workforce development in large healthcare institutions?

In this conversation, Jim Gordon shares his approach to being Chief Learning Officer at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He talks about the challenges and opportunities of connecting pockets of educational excellence in large organisations, and of meaningfully bringing interprofessional teams together to train and learn together.

The conversation was prompted by the announcement of a $50million philanthropic gift to support these endeavours at MGH, including a Learning Academy, and a Learning Hospital – a physical re-creation of multiple departments in the hospital to allow cross department team training.

Exciting times for Jim and his team, and opportunities to learn from others doing great work on building teams and systems for 21st century healthcare. 

Why would a medical school work with a business school to create a program for Leading Innovations in Health Care & Education? In this episode of the podcast we preview the upcoming program, and speak with program co-directors Liz Armstrong, Josh Nagler and Derek van Bever. We discuss the history and conceptual underpinning, and then take a more granular look at the activities for the week and how scholars can best prepare. We hear from Sarah Dawit, program alumnus from 2021 about her reflections on the program and on joining the HMI community.

Most of us would like to ‘write better’, but few of us make intentional efforts to improve. Lorelei Lingard is internationally known for her efforts to help health researchers and clinical scholars become better writers. In this podcast we talk about her Writers Studio courses and her book “Story, not Study”, 30 Brief Lessons to Inspire Health Researchers as Writers.

Lorelei Lingard has a ‘day job’ as Professor in the Department of Medicine, and Senior Scientist at the Centre for Education Research & Innovation, both at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University in Canada. With a PhD in Rhetoric, she studies the communication practices of clinical teams, and evidence-based educational initiatives to improve teamwork.  She received the Karolinska Prize for Research in Medical Education in 2018.

In this conversation, she shares details of her training in rhetoric, her transition to working in health professions education, and her joy she finds in coaching relationships as a writing mentor. We spoke about the Writer’s Craft - a transformative series of articles on better academic writing - written by Lorelei and her colleague Chris Watling (also an HMI alumnus). Each article offers a succinct pearl: Mastering the sentence, Enlisting the power of the verb, Get control of your commas, and many more. Building on this series and their coaching work, the duo has now produced “Story, not Study”, 30 Brief Lessons to Inspire Health Researchers as Writers. If you’ve never considered your writing voice, whether you paragraph strategically, or how you approach academic hedging, this is a great place to start.  

Lorelei also shared her thoughts on reading habits (she thinks Margaret Atwood is good, but not great 😊), on writing for social media (check out @LingardLorelei), and on how speaking and writing are connected. She even had the temerity to point out the lack of coherence in one of the questions I asked her in the podcast!

For more on Lorelei’s work on writing, you might like her Academic Medicine Last Page on Story, not Study, and a wonderful talk she gave about coaching writing at a seminar at McGill University.

“Increased global attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion necessitates inclusive teaching in health professions education.” The opening line of this article by Jeremy Amayo and team set the scene for a wide ranging discussion of principle and practical strategies to help teachers be more inclusive – in the classroom, in the clinical environment, and in the online learning environment.

We start with a fundamental question to ask ourselves when considering inclusive teaching - “Who is being left out?”. We consider how our health professions learners are increasingly diverse – not only with regard to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, but also underrecognized traits like introversion/ extroversion, organizational habits, preferred learning styles, and reading speed. The 12 tips traverse fundamental principles to simple practical tips.

Jeremy shared some of his current PhD work on failure in health professions education, and how to develop our skills in learning from failure. We finished with a reflection on the writing and publishing process, including the concept of post publication peer review at MedEdPublish.

Happy listening.