A person at table one patted me on the shoulder, the glint in his eye signaling that the sessions on how to run a teaching team and be a more effective teacher at both the bedside and at the chalkboard would help him avoid the lower teaching scores that plagued my early academic years.
Focus on Fundamentals
I could go on, but the point is that while my fellow faculty and I reveled in the pleasure of a standing ovation, the truth is that the clapping had less to do with us or how we imparted information and more to do with the fact that we had shared with them the ingredients of their future success, something they actively longed for—a means to enhance their career success and satisfaction.
Mind you, none of these revelations were shocking; indeed, most are mundane and straightforward. However, the reality is that more often than not we just need help getting started—a little enzymatic push in the right direction. The fact that these needs were finally being met was evident in every heartfelt clap of the hands.
Lest you think these lessons are only important for us academic eggheads, I’d submit to you that the same, or at least similarly important, points are just as critical for young community hospitalists.
In fact, hospitalists and the field of HM are all very young; most of us are in desperate need of career guidance. And I’d go so far as to say the success of our field depends on meeting these needs as much or more than our ability to improve the quality of healthcare. The reality is that without sated, successful, career-oriented hospitalists, there can be no HM movement to improve the quality of care.
It’s tempting to feel that our residency training should prepare us for our jobs. However, the reality is that while residency prepares us reasonably well to practice clinic medicine, it does very little to prepare us for the wide-ranging rigors of medical practice. And while it’s easy to dismiss early-career development as touchy-feely nonsense, we do so at our own peril.
That message is written in the conflicts that abound within our HM groups and our hospitals, the burnout and low satisfaction that fuel our high turnover rate, and the unfulfilled careers that litter the HM landscape. It’s a message that threatens our beloved specialty—a message that all the clapping couldn’t drown out. TH
Dr. Glasheen is associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado Denver, where he serves as director of the Hospital Medicine Program and the Hospitalist Training Program, and as associate program director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program.