Annual leadership program reflects multidisciplinary realities of health care and medical education

Last June, a five-member team from the Penn State College of Medicine attended the Harvard Macy Institute’s annual Program for Leaders in Healthcare Education. As the experience of this group of scholars demonstrates, the course offers some important lessons for members of the health care and academic community engaged in work that cuts across disciplines and departments.

Luanne Thorndyke, MD: “There is an increasing recognition that the life of an academic faculty member is more complex than it was fifteen years ago, particularly for clinicians.”

The group was led by Luanne Thorndyke, MD, who in her role as the school’s associate dean for professional development, created a team of individuals to collaborate on the design of a program for junior faculty—something that did not exist at Penn State. They built the course from the ground up, and Thorndyke saw other professional development opportunities. “The team’s effectiveness made me understand that the team concept could be used to develop other programs.”

That team came to the Institute with the intention of moving forward the development of the school’s next large-scale program focused on improving the teaching skills and knowledge of the faculty. The team was carefully constructed to include representatives from the administrative, basic science, clinical, and educational realms. “A comprehensive curriculum was at the heart of what we wanted to do. In order to implement this, it was important to forge links between several different departments,” said Thorndyke.


A call for new thinking about professional development
The Office of Professional Development headed by Thorndyke is part of a relatively recent movement in medical education. For years physician-educators at medical schools like Penn State have been clamoring for faculty development programs more suited to today’s demands. Until recently, says Thorndyke, faculty at Penn State could find workshops or mentoring in isolated departments, but no institution-wide program existed. Now those programs are being developed in her office.

“In the past five years deans have seen the importance of making professional development opportunities available to faculty, and academic medical centers are increasingly setting up offices to deal with that,” said Thorndyke. “There is an increasing recognition that the life of an academic faculty member is more complex than it was fifteen years ago, particularly for clinicians.” Of course there are financial rationale as well—medical schools are increasingly viewing professional development as one of the keys to not only nurturing young faculty, but to keeping them on board.

John George, PhD (seated, second from left) is a member of Penn State’s Society of Distinguished Educators: “The last fifteen years have seen the growth of a research base on the effectiveness of educational models, including a lot of eye-opening research on the clinical side of education.”

John George, PhD, a member of the Harvard Macy team, points out that the birth of professional development offices is part of a comprehensive shift in the way doctors are trained. “The move by medical schools to problem-based learning and integrated curricula made it necessary for faculty skill sets to change. Along with that, the introduction of new technology meant that traditional skill sets were no longer applicable. Medical schools had to wrestle with the issue of how to respond to the call for new training.”

George is a notable example of the emergence of PhD educators whose role is to design curricula, introduce innovations in education, and help faculty improve their teaching skills. He said that one advantage professional development offices have in creating new programs today is a growing store of knowledge about what works and what does not in educating faculty. “The last fifteen years have seen the growth of a research base on the effectiveness of educational models, including a lot of eye-opening research on the clinical side of education.”

Lessons from the leadership program
Each participant or group in the Leaders in Healthcare Education program is asked to bring an institutional project. For the faculty from Penn State, the goal was fairly clear: to take a large-scale faculty development program to the next step. What was less clear was how they planned to implement the program once they designed the components.

“One of the major reasons for attending the course was to help the team members as individuals understand at a deeper level the complexities around institutional change,” said Thorndyke. “And since this was part of a comprehensive effort, we wanted to support a more analytical methodology for approaching complex topics.” For the team from Penn State, Clayton Christensen’s lectures on disruptive technologies, and Elizabeth Armstrong’s use of case studies as a teaching tool, both offered particularly relevant insight into new ways of thinking about education and program development.

Said George, “We were eager to identify strategies that would help us maximize our impact, and help us gain approval for our programs from the different groups at Penn State.” He emphasized that for many institutional initiatives would be better served by a team of scholars attending the Harvard Macy Institute. “During the program we learned together about strategies for creating change, but we understood that when we returned we would be models independent of the team. Each of us took different lessons from our experience, and once back in our own environment, this extended our influence beyond the boundaries of the team.”

Thorndyke hopes to create more opportunities for Penn State faculty to attend the Harvard Macy Institute. “More and more, organizations are looking at how they can integrate different programs, share faculty, and develop interdisciplinary teams. The individuals develop new knowledge that they can apply when they return, and they become educational resources for the rest of the College of Medicine.”

The Program for Leaders in Healthcare Education is designed to help leaders in health care delivery and medical education develop the tools and strategies to drive change within their organizations. The 2005 program will be held June 12-17 in Boston, co-directed by Armstrong, Christensen, and Dr. Joseph B. Martin, dean of Harvard Medical School. Past participants have included leaders at all levels of health care education and delivery whose major responsibilities require them to introduce and manage significant interdepartmental changes or innovations at their institutions. Ideally, the program is intended for teams of two or three leaders from the same institution, though the Institute welcomes individuals as well. Applications to the June program are currently being accepted through the Institute website: www.harvardmacy.org.