Show Notes
Description
Drs Aaron Maki, Megan Keiser, and Austin Sim visit the studio as we discuss building an academic career toolkit. We explore strategies for building strong teaching skills, meaningful mentorship, career planning, and effective leadership. We hope you can join us!
Topic
Building Your Academic Career Toolkit
Learning Objectives
At the end of this activity, participants should be able to:
- Apply evidence-based teaching strategies to improve learner engagement in clinical and educational settings.
- Analyze the components of effective mentorship and sponsorship relationships in academic medicine.
- Evaluate personal academic activities in relation to institutional promotion criteria.
- Develop foundational leadership skills to support transition into programmatic or administrative roles.
Guests
Dr Aaron Maki
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
The Ohio State University College of Medicine
Dr Megan Keiser
Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery
The Ohio State University College of Medicine
Dr Austin Sim
Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology
The Ohio State University College of Medicine
Links
Center for Faculty Advancement, Mentoring, and Engagement (OSUCOM)
MentorcliQ – Faculty Mentoring Program (OSUCOM)
Center for Faculty Development (Nationwide Children’s)
The Business of Science – Fisher College of Business (OSU)
Professional Development for Medical Educators (AAMC)
Professional, Corporate, and Continuing Education (Harvard)
Office of Faculty Development and Engagement (Stanford)
Episode Transcript
[Dr Mike Patrick]
This episode of FAMEcast is brought to you by the Center for Faculty Advancement, Mentoring and Engagement at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.
[MUSIC]
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of FAMEcast. We are a faculty development podcast from the Ohio State University College of Medicine.
This is Dr. Mike coming to you from the campus of Ohio State. It’s episode 21. We’re calling this one Building Your Academic Career Toolkit.
I want to welcome all of you to the program. We are so happy to have you with us. You know, advancing in academic medicine requires more than just clinical expertise.
It demands strong teaching skills, meaningful mentorship, strategic career planning, and effective leadership. Unfortunately, in our medical training, it really focuses on those clinical skills, right? Taking care of patients.
Oftentimes, depending on the program that you’re in, there may be a big research component as well. We start to learn about mentoring relationships during our training, but they really kick into gear when we become faculty members. And then, as we think about teaching ourselves, which we may have done a little bit as a resident teaching medical students, but then early in our faculty career, we suddenly have a lot more teaching responsibilities and we’re expected to be good at it.
And then we have to think about promotion and tenure. You know, a lot of things that we didn’t have to think about during our medical training. And so, we really want support wherever we can find it.
It’s going to be really important. And in this episode of FAMEcast, we’re going to explore practical strategies to help faculty grow as educators, building impactful mentoring relationships, and aligning our work with promotion pathways, and confidently stepping into leadership roles. We’re going to kind of sum up all of those things in this particular episode.
We do have some other episodes of FAMEcast from the past in the archive that really focuses on a lot of these things individually in much more detail, but we wanted to talk with three faculty members today who have really used Fame tools in order to advance their career. And whether you are early in your career or you’re preparing your next step, we hope that this conversation will offer some actionable insights to help you move forward with purpose.
Our guests today are Dr. Aaron Maki, Dr. Megan Keiser, and Dr. Austin Sim. They are all assistant professors at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. Aaron is a pediatrician, Megan is in neurological surgery, and Austin is in radiation oncology. So, different backgrounds, but we still have the same purpose of wanting to be excellent teachers and mentors and leaders.
And so, we’re going to talk about all of these things. Before we get to them, I do want to remind you the information presented in FAMEcast is for general educational purposes only. Your use of this audio program is subject to the FAMEcast Terms of Use Agreement, which you can find at famecast.org.
Let’s take a quick break, we’ll get our expert panel settled into the studio, and then we will be back to talk about building your academic career toolkit. It’s coming up right after this.
[MUSIC]
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Dr. Aaron Maki is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, and an associate division chief of research and medical director of the main campus urgent care at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Dr. Megan Keiser is an assistant professor of neurological surgery at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, and she is affiliated with the Gene Therapy Institute, where she is engaged in innovative translational work. And Dr. Austin Sim is an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he also serves as director of hematologic radiation oncology, and that division’s director of medical student education. Together, they bring a wealth of experience in medical education, mentorship, and academic leadership, and that is what they’re here to talk about today, building your academic career toolkit.
Before we dive into our topic, let’s offer a warm FAMEcast welcome to our guests, Dr. Aaron Maki, Dr. Megan Keiser, and Dr. Austin Sim. Thank you all for stopping by the studio today.
[Dr Austin Sim]
Yeah, I really appreciate the invitation and looking forward.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Great. We are really excited to have all of you guys here as well. Aaron, I wanted to start with you.
When we think about becoming a great medical educator, so I think all of us, you know, when we start our academic career teaching, we’ve had a little bit of experience with it, you know, in residency as we teach medical students, but it is, you know, fairly new compared to clinical practice and maybe even research. So, where do we start? You know, where do faculty begin learning to be great teachers?
[Dr Aaron Maki]
Yeah, and that is the nice thing about developing teaching skills, educator skills, that we did all start off as learners. A really good place to start is thinking back to all the good teachers you’ve had in your life and ask what made them great. How can I be more like them, or how can I incorporate some of their techniques into my own medical education practice?
I think then from there, you can focus on some high-yield teaching skills to help quickly improve your teaching. I guess for giving feedback, I’d recommend the ask-to-tell-ask method. It’s more of a conversational style.
For bedside teaching, the one-minute preceptor approach is the way to go, and I included that in the show notes. But having like quick one-to-two-minute teaching scripts for common patients you see or procedures that you do can really help keep things going smoothly in a clinical environment. And then focusing and honing your teaching skills based on the learner’s level, whether they’re kind of a reporter of facts or if they can do more interpretation of those things, if they’re able to manage patients effectively, or if they’re kind of a master-level educator.
That really comes with practice. And then finally, where faculty develop comes in is where you can identify a skill that you lack, but you would like to have. For example, I thought I was okay at bedside teaching for the most part, but I was interested in developing like a curriculum for a class but had no idea where to start for that.
But fortunately, at OSU, we do have an entire class on how to develop a curriculum for medical educators. These classes can be synchronous or asynchronous online instruction, and then the certificates you can get from them may be helpful for the promotion process, which we’ll talk about later. But as far as faculty development in education goes, anytime you see the name Dr. Dan McFarlane, that’s an automatic recommendation for me. But to sum it up, just really reflect on the good teachers you’ve had, use techniques like Ask-Tell- Ask and the One-Minute Preceptor, and then seek out faculty development to training to build your skills.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
And we’re going to have a link in the show notes over at Famecast.org for this particular episode to the Center for Faculty Advancement, Mentoring, and Engagement at Ohio State. And they have a ton of resources on all of these things that we’re going to be talking about. So, they have modules on teaching and learning, on leadership, on mentoring, and career advancement.
For those who are at Ohio State, they have, you know, all the promotion and tenure support type stuff there. A list of all the upcoming sessions, and you do not have to be at Ohio State to participate in those. You can sign up from anywhere, and a lot of them are virtual.
They also have previous recordings of past sessions. Of course, all of these FAMEcast podcast episodes are also available through that site. And then we do have some interesting programs that are really formal in-person experiences that last several months.
One’s called FUEL, which is Fame Unites Engaged Leaders. Another one called FLY, which is the Faculty Leadership Institute. And then ATLAS, which is Applied Technical Leadership and Administrative Skills.
So, lots of opportunity, and I think that there’s a lot of faculty members out there who aren’t, you know, aware that all of these resources exist, and you can get to all of them at Fame’s website. And again, we’ll put a link to that in the show notes for everybody. So, Megan, Aaron had talked about some teaching strategies, right?
Like ask-do-ask, the one-minute preceptor. Can you go into a little bit more detail on what those look like, and if you have other high-yield sort of evidence-based teaching strategies that faculty can incorporate into their teaching?
[Dr Megan Keiser]
Sure, I’d love to. So, I am primarily a researcher, so I don’t do as much medical education, but I am constantly teaching day-to-day with grad students and undergraduates, as well as doing formal lectureship. And like Aaron said, there are an amazing wealth of resources that Fame offers and OSU has as supports for that.
One of the most engaging sessions that I actually attended was just broadly, it was called How to Speak in Front of Groups and Get Asked Back, and it was extremely engaging. It was given by a physician called Nathan Rosenberg, who I think is a frustrated stand-up comic maybe. He’s also, he’s very good at what he does.
The immediate feedback and active learning that he really reinforced throughout this amazing hour presentation, more of like the ask-tell-ask, the placing a question out there, waiting for feedback, and then asking for a more in-depth explanation to really show that there is a thorough understanding. Having a structured scaffold, it’s always nice to kind of prime your students, what they can expect. And one of the techniques that Nathan had was have a hook.
Put a question out there that you’re going to have a call back to later on, because that’ll keep people engaged with like an open-ended question, how to come back to it. The use of, if you’re looking at formal teaching, the use of Carmen Canvas and other resources is fantastic. Everything’s so digital now.
You can have interactive polls that are done in the class where everyone can get on their phones, take a snapshot of a QR code, and immediately respond to get feedback. Then discussions can come out of that. And also, that curriculum designed for medicine and healthcare is a six-month course, I think, but it actually teaches you from the ground up really how to integrate award-winning teaching skills from people that at the university and from outside resources have extremely high awards and credentials for that.
So really, really leaning into all of the available opportunities that Ohio State has.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, absolutely. I actually took that class a few years ago on curriculum development. And Aaron, I agree with you.
Dr. Dan McFarland does a fantastic job teaching that class, and I would also highly recommend it for anyone, especially if you’re going to be designing a curriculum, you know, and you want to learn things like Bloom’s Taxonomy, as you think about learning objectives and those sorts of things that we don’t really learn in medical school, unless you go for your, you know, master’s in medical education or something.
So definitely good tools. Aaron, can you expand a little bit on those two teaching techniques that you had mentioned, the one-minute preceptor and ask, tell, ask? What exactly are those?
[Dr Aaron Maki]
Yeah, for ask, tell, ask, you kind of go to the student first and say, like, kind of like, how did it go? And oftentimes they kind of have their own, like, they kind of know, for the most part, like what went well and kind of what went poorly. And then from there, you tell them, like, say what you observed.
Say, I observed this. And then you ask them again, do you agree with what I just observed? And then they can go from there.
Then you ask them another question, and you can tell kind of objective facts that you’ve seen. And it can just be a really a conversational style of giving out feedback. And then as far as the one-minute preceptor goes, and it’s a process of like several things.
So, you’d have the patient, the patient present to you. And then first of all, you get a commitment that you tell, ask them, what do you think is going on? Like, don’t, don’t be wishy-washy.
Just like, what’s your differential? Or kind of depending on the situation, just get them to commit to something. And then you kind of ask questions for there.
And then why do you think that? Like probe for supporting evidence. And then from there you can go into, if you have any like general teaching rules, you can go from there.
And then after that, you just give a very quick, like kind of reinforce what was done well. Hey, you had a good level of detail on this, or like you picked up this. And then finally, if you notice any mistakes, definitely correct those.
And that can be an iterative process. It usually doesn’t have to take too long. It’s like one to two minutes, like for each patient or depending on the setting you’re in.
So, it’s got to be a really quick way to get through flow in a clinic.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
And I love that you do that intentionally in that order, because a lot of times it’s easy to skip that Y part. You know, what do you think is going on? They tell you and then you correct them or you agree with them and then go on to say, okay, so let’s do X, Y, and Z because you’re kind of pressed for time.
But just taking that extra time to say, well, why do you think that really reinforces those critical thinking skills that sometimes, especially in this age of AI and electronic medical records and having pathways and order sets and all of these things, it’s easy to kind of forget about that critical thinking part of medicine, which is just so important. And so, I just encourage everyone to incorporate that. It’s probably the most important thing in terms of, you know, teaching how you think and how you organize these things in your head.
So very, yeah, very important. Great, great tool. Austin, I want to bring you into the conversation.
You know, there’s a lot of challenges with feedback in particular, but that’s really important, especially, you know, maybe at the end of our time with a learner during a clinic session or a shift in the emergency department. And we just want to give them some feedback on how they’re doing. What are what are some of the challenges with that and how can we do it more effectively?
[Dr Austin Sim]
Yeah, so I think feedback is tough. One of those other skill sets that we’re never really taught how to do, but we’re expected to do really well and really effectively. And I feel that the biggest mistake about feedback is only giving it at the end.
Right. So, you kind of observe kind of how the learner has performed and you kind of give them some feedback on their way out. And they don’t really have an opportunity to incorporate that feedback at the time and use that to kind of improve themselves, you know, kind of during the course of what they’re doing.
So, you know, in terms of giving feedback, I think early and often I think are kind of important tools and not just relying on kind of the end of rotation feedback. I think having more of these, you know, utilizing some of these methods to do kind of more informal feedback kind of throughout your contact with a learner earlier on is probably more effective. Additionally, it’s been mentioned a little bit before, but should be specific exactly, you know, kind of what particular aspect you and feedback on should be direct.
It should be timely. You know, if you’re going to give feedback on something that happened a couple of days ago, you know, it might be hard to remember the specifics and, you know, kind of addressing things at the time and a la minute are going to be a lot more effective. I think you’re going to be more kind of stick out more for the learner.
So, you know, kind of feedback to me is an ongoing process. It’s not really a discrete event. So, I think, you know, in terms of continuous improvement and things like that, it’s important to make sure that we’re deliberately incorporating it more as part of a process than as a, as an end point.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. Yeah. And as educators really, we ought to be seeking feedback from our learners as well.
And that really ties into our next question for Aaron. I mean, how can we evaluate if our teaching is effective and I get, you know, one way is to incorporate feedback and have the learner, you know, give us suggestions on what we can do better, but what, what are other ways that we can evaluate if what we’re doing is working?
[Dr Aaron Maki]
Yeah. And I think, I think the most important thing to remember is when you kind of self-evaluate your own teaching is to kind of use multiple sources of information. These info sources include, of course, the learner evaluations, but also kind of like direct observation of teaching by a peer also.
And then consider doing like some self-reflection through like making things like a teaching portfolio. So first of all, for learner evaluations, take a long-term statistical approach. I think, am I improving long-term overall?
And like obviously the comments can be like hit or miss sometimes is there can be varying levels of motivations or bias in the good or bad direction involved. And then also if you are teaching in multiple different settings, if like you’re doing bedside teaching, also class teaching, I think try to compare those apples to apples only because you might be better at one or the other. And just you’re looking for long-term improvement overall.
But for the other source, I do recommend trying to do direct observation of your teaching by a peer. One really good way to do that is like if you are doing like an online lecture, getting a recording of that, and then send it to a trusted peer and they can evaluate it. And then oftentimes your institutional probably have like a template for peer observation.
Just send them that template and have them fill it out. Usually not too much work on their part. And try to do that at least one once per year.
And then you can kind of collect them and kind of compare them over time just to make sure you’re growing as a teacher. The same person is great if they can do it, but it’s not required. And then lastly, something I do recommend is keeping a teaching portfolio of all the talks you have done or like chalk talks or like formal informal.
And that can be just like a file of papers or a computer file or actually for myself, I do keep it on an OSU website, kind of review it periodically. Still working on my web skills, but kind of learning how to make a WordPress website is fairly intuitive and quick. But just looking at your teaching work as a whole can really kind of help with self-reflection and what has gone well and where to go next.
But so, in summary, kind of keep a long-term approach for teaching evaluations, do peer observations yearly and kind of keep a teaching portfolio of what you’ve already done.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
You mentioned creating a WordPress website just so folks know the FAMEcast website, if you go to Famecast.org, that is run by WordPress. So that’s just an example of how you can sort of organize material and present it in ways that are easy for learners to engage with. So that’s definitely a tip that I was not expecting, but it’s a good one.
Megan, let’s shift over to mentorship, which is also important, especially as we try to increase our teaching skills, you know, looking to mentors who are great teachers is something great. Although, you know, maybe there’s another niche within academic medicine that you are interested in. How can you identify and engage with the right mentors for your goals in your own career?
[Dr Megan Keiser]
Excellent question. First, I think it’s good to identify what your goals in your career are and look to see who in the past have maybe achieved those goals and what you’re moving forward toward. I came to this institution from out of state, and so I didn’t necessarily have any connections, but the mentor clicks option, which is kind of a broad overview that mentors and mentees can sign up for and try to match, is a good place to start.
I also went to some mentorship spotlight talks that were kind of success stories of that, how to really choose what you’re looking for and how to go about it. Looking both in your department and outside your department can give you good reflections from in and out. As a woman in science, it can be helpful to have a female as a mentor.
It can also be very important to have a male. So, I think kind of having different mentors at different stages of their careers are very important. And I am a big proponent of kind of witnessing what I want to become or achieve.
So, kind of in the same line as teaching and learning, if you have identified a teacher or a mentor within the institution that you find extremely motivational and helpful, try to expose yourself to that as much as possible to see what they’re doing and try to emulate that. One of the big things with official mentorship is setting up guidelines and goals that you want and also meeting frequently. So there are some mentors I have that are kind of off the cuff if I need ad hoc kind of sounding board, but some of my most beneficial mentors, we have very carved out blocks of time with the understanding that occasionally I need to be more flexible because the senior members of the staff have more responsibilities potentially and are wearing more hats as well as providing mentorship for the new investigators. And so, I think also I wanted to mention the Pathway to Success series that people have had.
I found the speeches by Carla Zadnick and by Kim Ren-Rathville extremely motivational with also good reflections on who to look for as mentors and in what stages of their careers and your careers. Also, outside of the institution is also helpful as well. And that may also be beneficial for later on when we talk about promotion and dossier letters of recommendation.
So, if you have the time, talk to as many people as you can and try to engage as many mentors or sources of wisdom, really, that you can.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, absolutely. About half of our audience is actually outside of Ohio State at other institutions. And I just want to mention, most places have a program that will match up mentees with mentors, depending on what your goals are and sort of where you are in your career.
You had mentioned Mentorship Clicks, is that right?
[Dr Megan Keiser]
Mentor Clicks.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Mentor Clicks. OK. And so that’s through Ohio State.
Nationwide Children’s Hospital, if you’re a faculty there, has its own mentorship matching program. And really, wherever you are, you likely have one, even if you’ve not heard of it before. So, if you contact the folks in education at your particular institution, you’ll probably be able to find that.
We have done several episodes on mentorship in the past, so I would encourage folks to look through the archive if you’re in particular interested in mentorship. Austin, can you just give us sort of a nutshell of what is a productive mentorship relationship actually look like in practice?
[Dr Austin Sim]
Yeah, so I think it kind of depends on what role you’re playing. Are you the mentee or are you the mentor? And I think especially as newer faculty, you’re kind of in this liminal space where you kind of need both.
So, you’re taking on mentees that are usually learners or trainees, and you have more senior colleagues as mentors. But I think these relationships are symbiotic in terms of kind of productivity. I think that’s and also serving and one role in one relationship, I think, helps you kind of know how to serve as the other role in the other relationship.
So, kind of playing both sides does help you kind of understand what the needs of a mentor are and what the needs of a mentee are. And you’re able to kind of do both of those things. And then, you know, I think one piece that I always think about when I think about mentorship, there is a nice kind of narrative article in JAMA back in 2016.
It’s titled Mentorship Malpractice. Neet Chopra is the first author about looking at different types of individuals who potentially could be mentors and kind of things to avoid and pitfalls and all of that. I think the other key piece is, you know, mentorship is something that’s, you know, it’s one on one on some level, but, you know, you can’t necessarily get everything that you need from a single mentor and a mentor might actually would always say you need to create your mentorship board of directors.
You might have different individuals at different stages of their careers as mentioned before but can also help with different aspects of your own career, both, you know, kind of work life, maybe even family, personal life, all these sorts of things. So, you know, having as many of these connections as possible and, you know, kind of figuring out who to go to for what I think is important as well in terms of making sure that the relationship is productive.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Aaron, when do you sort of transition from being a mentee to being a mentor? And are there times when you might be both of those things?
[Dr Aaron Maki]
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s just after a few years on the job, you’re kind of not the new person anymore. There’s might be a few people under you at this point.
It’s good time for self-reflection. Just ask yourself, am I ready to pay it forward? Most of time when you ask that question, you probably are ready to be a mentor and kind of you can start always start small.
I’m usually like a more junior member, oftentimes in your department or kind of adjacent department. And you can just kind of check in with them, see how they’re doing professionally. If you have any like informal advice, feel free to give that.
Definitely check out your mentorship matching programs like MentorcliQ. But it’s also kind of when you feel like you’re ready to be a mentor, you can kind of also evaluate your own like mentoring relationships overall, kind of think about what didn’t is not going well and kind of avoid those pitfalls. But and as far as like mentorship skills go, just practicing good listening skills, kind of ask your mentee open ended questions.
Often in medicine, we’re like to give our patients very specific advice. They have to do some very certain things at certain times. But kind of with mentorship, it’s kind of a more open-ended kind of strategy and helping them progress in their own careers as well.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
I love the idea of thinking about what’s worked in your own mentor mentee relationship, but also what hasn’t worked. And then, you know, letting that inform what sort of mentor that you are, because even when you have a bad experience, we can get a lot out of that in terms of how do I want to behave moving forward? And, you know, what does that relationship look like?
And then also just talking about that relationship with your mentor or mentee, you know, is this going in the direction you want it to? And if it’s not, it’s, you know, it’s not bad to say, okay, we’re going to stop this relationship. We’ll still be friends, but I do need to, you know, find a different mentor.
And that’s okay, because you really want what’s going to be best for your career. This is really all about, you know, improving our own skills in academic medicine. Megan, speaking of when things go bad, what are some common pitfalls in mentorship that we should all be aware of?
[Dr Megan Keiser]
I think matching communication styles is very important. You and your mentor have to be able to have an amicable but truthful relationship. And however, that falls down.
Failing to set clear goals. Also, if you want to achieve certain things in this mentorship relationship, and the mentor is not aware of that, you will never get anywhere. Also, miscommunication is, I feel, the biggest downfall in most relationships.
And that’s the same thing in the mentor relationship. Occasionally, I, one time a mentorship did not work out for me, I wanted to kind of be pushed and to expand myself, really, and to grow as a better scientist and educator. And I feel that the mentor was trying to just over-evaluate or correct rather than pose questions that would lead to kind of internal development.
The best lessons are learned not when you’re told them, but when you kind of come to the realization on your own. And that kind of goes back to the communication skills and setting clear goals, I think.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, so important. And then re-evaluating how things are going. Are you really meeting those goals?
Is there a way we can change the relationship so that my goals are met? Or do I need to find a different mentor? These are all questions that you may need to ask yourself.
Again, if you’re interested in learning a lot more about mentorship, please do check out some of our past episodes of FAMEcast in the archive over at famecast.org. You’ll find episodes dedicated to mentorship entirely. Another term that sometimes comes up is sponsorship.
Austin, can you talk a little bit about what is sponsorship and how is that different from mentorship?
[Dr Austin Sim]
Yeah, definitely. So, sponsorship involves more of somebody using their own political capital, you know, taking some of the opportunities they have and instead of taking it for themselves, they, you know, would pass it on to somebody more junior to, you know, give them the opportunity and raise them up. So, it’s a bit more, not necessarily active, but it does, there’s a little bit more of a deliverable there that’s being kind of exchange-based, not exchange, but there’s more of a deliverable that’s being kind of passed down.
So, I think of sponsorship and mentorship as two parts of a tripod. Third part of that is coaching, that these are all kind of interrelated types of relationships. They’re all slightly different and have slightly different purposes and outputs, basically.
The sponsorship I see is a bit more direct, you know, kind of handing down of opportunities. And then I think what Megan was describing earlier, the type of relationship she was looking for actually sounded more like a coaching relationship where she wanted somebody as more of a sounding board to help her kind of discover things for herself, rather than, you know, just kind of getting advice more passively in a more mentoring type relationship.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah. I can see where folks would get a little confused amongst those three terms. And there may be times when your mentor acts as a coach, and there may be times when your mentor is also a sponsor.
So, they are kind of intertwined a little bit. And I love that, you know, if you think about sponsorship as there’s a deliverable, I love the way you put that, you know, it’s definitely something that then that deliverable can enhance the career of the mentee. And oftentimes, you know, if someone is a sponsor or a coach, they probably are in some way a mentor, too.
So, all of these things kind of all come together. And like you say, Austin, it’s a trifecta of positions there. Let’s turn our attention to promotion.
Aaron, can you talk a little bit about right from the get-go how new faculty, you know, maybe several years before you’re thinking about promotion, how can you align your work, you’re learning to be a better teacher, you know, being involved in mentoring relationships? How can you align all of those activities so that they point you toward promotion in a few years?
[Dr Aaron Maki]
Yeah, my biggest piece of advice is to read your promotion criteria document today. If you can’t read it today, print it out, save it, and schedule a time to read it tomorrow. Just do it.
It is that important. The document will likely seem long and intimidating at first, but you can actually skip most of it to read just the sections that apply to you only. So, it’s actually not too long of a read.
So, I really want you to do that, especially if you’re deciding on your track still. It can really clarify what is expected in terms of teaching, service, research, and clinical responsibilities in academic medicine in terms of metrics and other things. Also, your interviews are also a perfect time to check in with your boss in regards to your progress to promotion.
You can really discuss how to best fit your goals into the broader goals of your department, kind of to help you find your productive niche. And that way, you can kind of develop a broader strategy when opportunities do come up. So, if something comes up, you will have an idea of, does this fit for me?
If you can be intentional with your kind of accepting of opportunities. But otherwise, just having a good system for documenting the things you’ve done, and we might talk about that a little bit later. But after a while, you end up doing a lot and just keep keeping track of that as well.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Megan, can you go into more detail on the documentation part of it? What should we be documenting as we go along?
[Dr Megan Keiser]
I made a note of this. Everything, apparently. Absolutely everything.
I have a magnet that has a QR code that takes me to the APT toolbox that I got that I look at frequently to kind of check in and see what’s going on. The best ideas I got were from Tanya Oberyszyn, who does a lot of P&T courses through FAME. And she said, make a separate email folder that is tagged P&T.
And anytime you get any sort of invitation to give a talk or review an article or review a grant, anything, just mark it, put it in that folder, and then schedule out about 45 minutes every three months to go through that folder and update your CV, update your checklist of what’s going in your dossier, what can be done for your annual reviews, because everything is going to culminate. And if you lose track of it, it’s going to be much harder to go back and look at 12 months of things that have happened. Because as Aaron said, and Austin hinted, things move so fast.
And it’s before long, you won’t remember what month that was or when that came in. So really prioritize your promotion and schedule time for yourself just to go through that and see what you need. Again, check your APT doc, your P&T document.
Look at what it was at the time you were hired versus if it’s updated and if there’s a better choice there. I know there have also been courses that have been done to say how you can kind of alter narratives now that funding is a bit more difficult, how to record what your efforts have been and how that’s going. Teaching evals, we spoke about this with teaching, but peer teaching evaluations are very big in my department as well as learner evaluations.
And so that can not only serve as an informative way to improve your own teaching, but it also has to be documented. If it wasn’t written down, it never happened. So, document everything, keep a folder for it and check it frequently.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. Yeah. So important.
And I think in a nutshell, get that document as soon as you are a faculty member and familiarize yourself with whatever track you’re on. And if you’re going from assistant professor to associate professor, know exactly what those criteria are. And then that way, as you’re moving forward with mentorship and with teaching and all of these things, you sort of know what you’re aiming for.
And that’s not something you want to do the year before you decide you’re going to go up for promotion. You really want to do it as you go along and document everything. Really important.
We do have several, I think there were three fame casts in a row that were just all on promotion and tenure. And Tanya Oberyszyn was the guest for one of those. And so, I would encourage folks to go back and listen.
And there’s always in-person resources and events around promotion and tenure, which you may want to attend one of those even two or three years before you’re going to go up, just so you have an idea of the process and what that looks like. Austin, one important part of promotion is having a national reputation. How, as you’re getting started with all of this, how do you increase your visibility and sort of your scholarly impact so that you can show that you actually have a national reputation?
How do you develop that?
[Dr Austin Sim]
Yeah, so I think there are a number of different ways. Historically, when I was a trainee, I actually used social media a lot. So, the radiation oncology community had a very big following on what was formerly known as Twitter and actually had, that was the first place I would go to, to find new articles.
When things were published, that’s where authors would post their information first. And that’s where you would get the most up-to-date information. So, we had a really nice ecosystem, which unfortunately doesn’t really quite exist at the same level anymore.
But I think it can be a very effective tool of disseminating the work that you’re doing to multiple different audiences. I think there are a number of other social media outlets at this point that you can also use. I think the other thing that’s really important is going to meetings and networking with your colleagues at other institutions and other places.
And so, getting out there, meeting people, discussing your research in those sorts of areas. I think the days of passively just putting out a paper and having it in a journal for someone else to go and find are really over. There are kind of deliberate ways where you can tastefully self-promote either on social media or in person at meetings and things like that.
I found that’s been really effective in terms of really establishing that reputation. I think there’s probably a whole nother podcast we could do about specialist societies and getting involved in those sorts of things, committee work and all of that. And I won’t go into in super depth, but getting involved not just within the institution, but in these other societies can really get your name out there in a way to really promote what you’ve done more broadly.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. Yeah. I think Austin, you’ve just volunteered for another appearance on FAMEcast to talk about, because you’re right.
We could fill an hour on ways to develop your national reputation and that would actually be a really good episode.
[Dr Austin Sim]
Hey, I’m happy to do so. I probably average about 12 to 14 meetings a year that I go to. So, I’m in.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. Yeah. Let’s do it.
Let’s do it. Let’s talk a little bit about leadership. Aaron, this is something that then, you know, especially once you’ve really got started, you’re teaching, you’re mentoring, it’s sort of the natural progression now to step into some leadership roles.
What sort of skills do you need to begin developing yourself as a leader in academic medicine?
[Dr Aaron Maki]
Yeah. I think as kind of clinicians, we are already, we already kind of are leaders, whether we want to be or not, most of the time. And like with anything, it’s a skill you learn over time with, with practice.
Practice makes perfect. But I guess if I had to pick one foundational skill for leadership, that would definitely be communication. And that comes in different forms, whether, you know, sometimes you’re person to person or you’re in online meetings or through emails, but just overall, don’t be afraid to speak up on things and present your case on things.
But also, when you’re giving a feedback to other people, just try to be constructive and as positive as possible. Try to be concise and kind of can adapt your kind of style to different audiences. I would also recommend just getting a basic understanding of how your institution operates, like in your department level and higher up, kind of who makes what decisions and when, who works for who, what resources are budgeted and utilized, kind of what hierarchy and constraints are in the system and what trade-offs have to be made.
Just having a good understanding of leadership structure helps you kind of fit yourself better into that structure. And then from there, getting like either formal or informal training and like quality improvement or change management can be very helpful. Your own institution might have courses in like Lean or Six Sigma, or online modules can be really informative.
But just having us like a structured process to identify problems and hopefully be able to have a way to fix them once you’re in a leadership role can be a very good tool to have once you’re in these leadership positions. And then lastly, obtaining, and we’ve mentioned this already, but obtaining training in developing leadership skills can be very helpful. And at OSU, we’ve kind of mentioned the Fly and the Fuel and Atlas and other good, really good options we have here, but your institution will probably have one as well.
But I’d recommend seeking those out as well. But it’s always like fun to learn things in class and then try it out in real life, see how it goes and iterate from there. So, I guess in sum, kind of view yourself as a leader already, make sure you’re communicating effectively, understand your institutional leader substructure, and then get training.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And not that training, you know, those in-person classes and folks can learn more about those programs at the FAME website, which again, we’ll have in the show notes. Fuel, Fly and Atlas are fantastic programs, but not only for learning leadership skills, but also for networking within your institution.
You’re going to meet people that you would never have met across different departments and different divisions that then, you know, you may find a mentor in a discipline that’s entirely different from your own, but you do have some things in common and maybe you’ve had some of the same challenges and, you know, that sort of thing. So, I think in terms of networking, those leadership courses can be so, so helpful. Megan, how do you build confidence?
You know, I would imagine that there is a little bit of imposter syndrome as we think about leadership and academic medicine. Like, how do you take those first steps and really start to build confidence in yourself as a leader?
[Dr Megan Keiser]
Like you said, those in-person courses, I did take Fuel. That’s Danny Eiferman. He is incredible.
I was in a cohort a couple of cohorts ago and it was such a hit. They’ve actually started doing a refuel like every few months where people that have graduated can come back and talk about different problems we’re having as leaders, talk about those doubts and find out that it’s pretty ubiquitous. Like you said, the imposter syndrome, doubting what you’re doing and really kind of reinforcing what your core values and goals are, being able to verbalize those to yourself and others, and then kind of holding strong to those to lead in ways that foster trust and understanding.
Also talking about different situations where those techniques might not work, like in a high-impact surgery or emergency care where a more directive role is needed. And there you really have to embrace your expertise and trust in yourself and everyone, as long as you’re culturing an understanding and trusting culture outside of those high-stakes situations. I think that’s the best we can do moving forward.
Another course that is offered through OSU and the business school actually is called the Business of Science. And that also touched upon some amazing leadership techniques, but from kind of a different point of view from just leadership but looking at how companies have survived and thrived and how others have come to other cultural pressures. And there were similar but also very different leadership qualities that were exposed in that course as well.
So really taking the initiative to step outside and get as much information as being given to continue learning to try to enforce good leadership qualities.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Great, great advice. Austin, as we close things out, if you could just sum up, what are some ways that we can better understand what’s available at our individual institutions, how to navigate the resources that are in place?
Again, you know, we have a lot of listeners who are at other institutions. So, there’s some commonality in how you go about figuring out the resources. Where does one start and figure out how we navigate all of this?
[Dr Austin Sim]
Yeah, I think this is a great question and a very complicated topic and very well could be its own as well. I think Aaron hinted at this a little bit, but I see a difference between big L leaders and big L leadership versus little L leaders and little L leadership. And they kind of correspond to the concepts of power versus influence.
So big L leaders wield power. You know, they’re entrusted with a position and are expected to make decisions based on that position. But that may or may not be the same people that actually wield the influence and have the little L leadership where they’re able to actually get things done.
So, understanding who are in these different roles in different parts of the institution, I think are very important and kind of really understanding not just the kind of on paper organizational structure, but the actual organizational ecosystem that underlies the structure. And that’s kind of hard to give great guidance on how to do that for any specific case. It does require a little bit of detective work and just kind of being in the institution and kind of seeing how things kind of shake out as problems kind of arise.
The other thing I think is manifesting curiosity. When you run into a roadblock, I think saying things like, can you help me understand kind of why this is happening this way? Can you help me understand the structure that’s causing this roadblock?
And trying to start with this open-ended question and start a conversation is always a better way to go to start addressing some of these issues. So, a little bit of curiosity, a little bit, potentially some feigned ignorance, trying to really understand, trying to find some common ground for kind of jumping to a particular solution.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. Yeah. So important.
And a lot of it is just digging in, ask your mentor, what resources they use, what do they know about. And then do check out the Center for Faculty Advancement Mentoring and Engagements website, especially if you’re at Ohio State. But even if you’re not, there’s just so many resources on improving our teaching skills, leadership courses, mentoring and career advancement resources, you know, promotion and tenure, lots of in-person and virtual sessions that we have.
You can even look at previous recordings of past sessions. And of course, our FAMEcast podcast as well, where we cover lots of different faculty development topics. So please do check out the show notes for this episode over at Famecast.org.
And we’ll have a link to the Center for Faculty Advancement Mentoring and Engagement for folks to explore. And then some of these other things that we had talked about, such as mentor clicks, we’ll also put in the show notes. I know, Megan, you had mentioned Scarlet Canvas, and I just want to point out that right now it’s not available, that they’re like reorganizing and restructuring.
So, in past episodes of FAMEcast, I have mentioned that resource. It will be there again, probably from what I’ve heard, like late June, early July, sometime in the summer it should reappear. And when it does, if you go to Famecast.org and click on the resources tab up at the top of the page, I will have links to that again. They’re missing at the moment because they don’t really go anywhere, but they will be back and we’ll have all those great teaching resources and modules available for everyone in the near future. So once again, really appreciate you guys stopping by, taking time out of your day and chatting with us today. Dr. Aaron Maki, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Dr. Megan Keiser, Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery, and Dr. Austin Sim, Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology. Thank you all for stopping by and talking with us today.
[Dr Megan Keiser]
Thank you so much for having me.
[Dr Austin Sims]
A lot of fun.
[MUSIC]
[Dr Mike Patrick]
We are back with just enough time to say thanks once again to all of you for taking time out of your day and making FAMEcast a part of it. We really do appreciate your support.
Thanks again to our guests this week, Dr. Aaron Maki, Dr. Megan Keiser, and Dr. Austin Sim, all with the Ohio State University College of Medicine. Don’t forget, you can find FAMEcast wherever podcasts are found. We’re in the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Audible, and most other podcast apps for iOS and Android.
Our landing site is Famecast.org. You will find our entire archive of past programs there, along with show notes for each of the episodes, our terms of use agreement, and that handy contact page if you would like to suggest a future topic for the program. Reviews are helpful wherever you get your podcasts.
We always appreciate when you share your thoughts about the show. I also want to tell you about a couple of other podcasts that I host. If you are a pediatric provider, we have a podcast for you called PediaCast CME.
That stands for Continuing Medical Education. We do offer free Category 1 Continuing Medical Education credit not only for physicians, but also nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, social workers, and dentists. It’s because Nationwide Children’s is jointly accredited by all of those professional organizations that we can offer the credits you need to fulfill your state’s continuing medical education requirements.
I also host a podcast for parents. A lot of academic physicians are also parents, but you may not be a pediatrician. So, if you want to learn more about child health, be sure to check out that podcast.
We do cover pediatric news and interview pediatric and parenting experts. Shows are available at the landing site for that program, pediacast.org. Also available wherever podcasts are found, simply search for PediaCast.
Thanks again for stopping by, and until next time, this is Dr. Mike saying stay focused, stay balanced, and keep reaching for the stars. So long, everybody!
[MUSIC]
