Author Archives: stfmguestblogger

Be Conscious of What the Big Rocks Are in Your Life

Posted on April 22, 2013 | 4 comments
Julie Schirmer, LCSW

Julie Schirmer, LCSW

On May 3, 2012, I officially become the director of the STFM Behavioral Science/Family Systems Educator Fellowship, on top of many other commitments and responsibilities. As I approach this, I ask myself, “How will I ever fit the responsibilities of this position on top of everything else that I have to do? How do I prioritize? And, finally, what’s really important to me (ie, why am I doing this)?”

To me, the last question is the easiest to answer and was something I considered before accepting the position. I want to hang out with energized, impassioned faculty who are dedicated to nurturing our next generation of behavioral science faculty leaders. It’s part my desire to be inspired and challenged by others and part generativity.

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Posted in Faculty Development

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I Have a Confession

Posted on April 15, 2013 | 6 comments
Cheryl Seymour, MD

Cheryl
Seymour, MD

WomenInFMThis is the fourth in a work/life balance series written by members of the STFM Group on Women in Family Medicine.

The ACGME Draft Program Requirements for GME in Family Medicine include a requirement that all core faculty work full time. Please consider the implications of this requirement for your program now and in the future as you read this post.

So I have a confession… I really do want it all.

Doesn’t everyone?

I want to practice full spectrum family medicine: deliver babies, round on the floors and in the ICU, care for families in the clinic, nursing home, and at home and I want to teach residents and students, have a vibrant academic career, serve as an advocate for the health of my community and I want to be an engaged and loving parent and spouse.

Is this possible?

My mentors and heroes are physicians who have delivered three generations of babies, attend funerals as a matter of course, and have literally spent thousands of hours listening to residents’ H&Ps in the middle of the night. They have served the same community for decades and are still going strong, taking call without complaint, into their sixth and seventh decades.

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Posted in Women in Family Medicine Collaborative

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Faculty Development and the Family Medicine Milestones: What Do They Have to Do With Each Other?

Posted on April 3, 2013 | 1 comment
Joseph Brocato, PhD

Joseph Brocato, PhD

If you are like me, I am sure that many of you are vacillating between denial and avoidance—and perhaps even outright hostility—when contemplating the new ACGME Family Medicine RRC Milestones and Next Accreditation System (see http://www.acgme-nas.org/family-medicine.html). While indeed they involve a new way of tracking residents’ attainment of fundamental knowledge, skills, and attitudes, it also suggests that we as faculty need to make efforts to examine how much we know about evaluating our residents in this new era of competency-based education. What are some of the faculty skills we need to hone?
While there are the traditional academic roles of teaching, research, and scholarship and embedded skills within each, we now find ourselves needing to become much more proficient in the area of evaluation: how do we do a thorough evaluation of our trainees, and how do we take a potentially large bolus of evaluation data points for each resident/fellow and make a objective decision about residents/fellows reaching the sometimes seemingly elusive marker of being “competent to practice independently”?

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Posted in Education, Faculty Development

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