SCCM Resource Library-So Now You Are a Program Director: Ten Tips for New Program Directors

Video Transcription

Hello, welcome. Thank you for joining us. I'm Meredith Bone. I'm a pediatric critical care physician at Children's Hospital Colorado, University of Colorado.  I just recently started my position at University of Colorado, and prior to that, I was a fellowship  program director for pediatric critical care at Northwestern University Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago.  I was in that role for over nine years, and in that time, I was also in a position to advise and support other fellowship program directors.  If you are a new program director for physicians, advanced practice providers, pharmacists, or respiratory therapists, I say congratulations.  It's a very rewarding job, and also, there is so much to learn, especially in the beginning.  I will be sharing some tips on nuts and bolts that can be helpful at the beginning of being a program director, some considerations about leading others, the trainees, and the other  people that you're working with as a leader, and then some suggestions for looking ahead, really specifically around your own professional development.  When considering the broad scope of the job of a program director, a couple of groups have outlined competencies and entrustable professional activities for program directors.  I can recommend these two publications as a starting point for anyone interested in a job description and outline using a medical education framework.  Much of leadership skills that are relevant to being a program director are not specific to medical education itself, and I'm sure you will hear some common themes across the  presentations in the session today about leadership. To start off, the 10 tips, I can't stress highly enough the benefits of joining and  participating in program director and medical educator communities and organizations. This might be locally in your Academy of Medicine, your GME group, or peer groups of program  directors, your national subspecialty program director, or other national international medical organizations.  I did not realize the benefit of this early in my time as a fellowship program director, and I can say it really transformed my experience as a program director, diving in and being  active in a national organization for pediatric program director. It helped me stay up to date with new changes in the field and working and talking with  other program leaders about how they were addressing similar challenges or similar upcoming changes, and those people I met through the organizations became colleagues.  We worked together on scholarly projects, and it really helped move my own perspective and my own goals as a program director through working with those organizations.  Another point that perhaps is obvious but is essential to point out is the program director  really needs to know the ins and outs of all the local, national, board, and program accreditation requirements for the program for your trainees.  It might not be completely thrilling, but I highly, highly recommend gathering all of the different sets of requirements and going through them for the program, mapping the  current program to what those requirements currently are. This helps the program director become more familiar than they were with those specific  requirements and also finding some potential gaps that maybe there is something that isn't quite done to the extent that it could be or some places where there is some need for  focus to help get the program up to speed with those requirements. If you are in a program that is accredited by the ACGME, I would also recommend, in addition  to going through the requirements, taking a look back at the prior annual surveys that go to trainees and faculty to become very familiar with the content that's on those  surveys and how the program, the results of the program in the past couple of years. A training program is on a pretty regular calendar from recruitment through graduation  of trainees and in the first year, there can be a lot of learning and discovering some new parts of what happens in an academic year, and so it can be really helpful to just put  those on a calendar, when the events happen and some of the planning that needs to go up to make sure those are happening on time.  Certainly, as a program director, you're leading trainees. That's part of the obvious job description, but what may not be completely obvious in  the beginning is the program director is also leading others. They are leading faculty in the group, staff in the group that are working with the trainees.  There might be associate program directors and certainly a program coordinator, and the program director has a responsibility to be leading these people in different ways.  Now that you are in this position responsible for leadership of these various positions,  it will be immensely valuable to invest time to learn about leadership principles and reflect  on qualities of effective leadership, whether that's through reading, listening to podcasts  on your commute to work, taking dedicated leadership courses and training, and intentionally considering how you want to show up as a leader.  This can be so helpful as you are moving forward to be a consistent leader and to really be effective for all the people you are trying to support.  Considering the question, what are your most valued leadership behaviors? It's certainly very hard to choose just a few of the many great leadership qualities.  Being a good communicator, a credible leader, and an accountable leader, I believe are critical to the role of a program director. Communication to and from your learners is vital.  I recommend establishing multiple avenues for you to be able to hear from the trainees  and for you to communicate also back to them about things that you may be working on, especially things that they had brought up as concerns.  A very effective way to be doing this is regular meetings with the trainees, whether that's,  for example, once a month in person, virtually, for them to really have a lot of room for open forum, for them to bring concerns to the program leadership, and also, as I mentioned,  for you to be bringing back to them some things that are being worked on. But also having other ways, because not every person would find that to be the best way  to bring up concerns. Other ways could be anonymous surveys or anonymous portals that they could enter comments at any time.  Having very clear faculty advisors or using a chief residence, if that's established in your program, as a sounding board.  Definitely the informal check-ins, especially if there are certain situations or certain trainees that you're concerned about, and then another suggestion is having an identified  ombudsperson, whether that's in the program or outside of the group. That is another identified, whether faculty person or staff person, that the trainees  can go to to voice concerns. Within all of these, it is always really important to say, here is an avenue for communication,  and here's what would happen if we received or heard about a concern in this way, so that there's really clear expectations of what the follow-through would be with those types  of comments. As a program director, you are now expected to really walk the talk, especially in front  of trainees, to be saying the words and voicing the values and taking the actions in the clinical  realm as a leader of the team, and also outside of the clinical realm, where there's perhaps  the meetings and the decisions and the multiple points of view in certain stakeholder scenarios, that you are the voice of the trainee for the learning experience, and you know them  the best. In other places, we are also role modeling the values and the expectation for the trainee  experience with the other people who work with them, with the faculty, with the staff,  just to really remind them in certain conversations or certain decisions, and really putting your perspective out there of what it is that the training experience should be.  I find that much of the time, these opportunities that I have to be the voice for the trainees is around their experience related to the learning environment and their well-being.  You have great knowledge of what those trainees are experiencing and what their experiences have been as they've given you feedback, and so you have a lot of opportunity to share  that with the other people that are working with them.  And third in this list of vital leadership behaviors for a program director is accountability.  Learners need to see or hear where follow-through will happen on their concerns, and very often we as leaders might be working on something in the background, but the trainees, they  don't see that, and so unless they can see it, it might not be happening in their eyes.  And a nice simple framework to think about as you hear about concerns from the trainees is to say pretty immediately, this is something we can absolutely do.  I'm going to follow through, and I'm going to get back to you by this time.  There are other things that come up. We're unsure of where we can make progress or what can happen, and so then the response is,  we're working on it, and I will give an update to you by this time, and sometimes there isn't  a possibility, but there is a need or a request or something, and within the scope of all of  the different interests, it can't happen, and rather than ignoring it or trying to brush it aside, just being pretty upfront saying, hey, I hear you.  I understand why you're saying that, but that is not a solution that we can move forward with right now.  Just being clear about that in itself can be really helpful for the learners, and to be an accountable leader is also working with other people in the group, as we've already  talked about, and so a way to have accountability and to be in a position to deliver on accountability is also to be setting up regular times with the faculty or the staff or the  other non-trainees who the trainees are working with to update them and message on medical  education this theme of passing on what the values and the goals of the training experience are, and so an example of that could be at faculty meetings that you have a regular spot  to update the faculty group on things that are ongoing, maybe do a little bit of professional  development to the faculty on medical education topics, and then also related to being able to be an accountable program director is having the support of your boss.  You may already be a boss, a department chair or division head, but very often the program director is not in that position, and there are some, you might have a boss who really  understands medical education and understands how it's changed in recent years, but that's  not always the case, and so you may need some dedicated time to bring your boss on board because  that person can be helping move the culture and set the message and set the tone and set the  expectations for the rest of the group, and sometimes that your direct boss might not be the  the best or right person in certain situations, and so really encourage you to establish a  relationship with other people within medical education, and so that might be the DIO or your  vice chair of education who can be really helpful in certain scenarios to really advocate for your specific problem, and they can bring the perspective of medical education to the  to the powers that be around that scenario.  I mentioned there are so many sources for how to be a good leader, and it can certainly be challenging to sort through where to start. A approach that I can recommend is really  start by investigating and thinking about your own strengths as a leader, and this can be really  a nice way to develop your core approach as you understand your own strengths, and one  option is that here from the Gallup group, the Strengths-Based Leadership, there's a tool here  in this book to assess your own strengths as a leader,  and once you have a sense of your strengths as a leader, it can also be helpful to spend some time  and effort to try to undercover your blind spots as a leader, areas that are some weaknesses that  maybe you didn't realize, and certainly this can be hard. This is why they're called blind spots,  because they're not obvious to us, and it can be hard to get at this. Not everyone will feel  comfortable being truthful about your weaknesses if you're in a leadership position, but if you can  find a trusted person to really tell you the truth or ask for some feedback pretty regularly,  it certainly can be helpful. I can know a couple of scenarios where I heard about the way my  behavior or my decisions or my actions were experienced by others in my group or were really  eye-opening for me, and so this can go hand in hand with also understanding your strengths as a leader,  and once you know your strengths, you can then build your team around your strengths, and once  you have this clarity to say, here is an area that I have a need, whether it's in a skill set of  delivering the program or a content expert, that's when you can really be specific with your team  members to say, here's something we need for the program. It's not something I'm great at, but I know  that you are going to really run with this and succeed with it. It brings really clarity for  expectations. It promotes then the development autonomy of those team members, and certainly we don't always have every content expert in our close circle, and so I really encourage  you to look to external resources for filling in certain needs. For example, there might be a program  director in another group in your institution who's really invested and interested in helping  faculty develop related to feedback, and it's not your area of expertise, so invite that person. It's  their passion project. They're likely to say yes to come and help your faculty group, for example,  to learn that skill, and in the last couple of points, I want to encourage you to lead yourself  very early on, perhaps even before you say yes to being a program director. Put together a specific, visible professional development plan.  This is a plan that you put together with your boss who helps you put together a mentor team,  gives you resources and time, perhaps, to set aside to learn the new skills that you're going to need  to know as a program director related to delivering medical education and learning science and  leadership, and really being specific about with some clarity on the making sure that the  right protected time for you and the other program directors in your group and your coordinator are in place.  And lastly, as you are putting together this plan, it should include a specific thought-out  description of your own personal aims for the people you are training and for yourself in this process of being a program director. Putting clarity to your North Star or to your why  will be repeatedly helpful to guide you in the decisions moving forward as new problems arise or  new scenarios come up. To be able to remember why you're doing this and what the overall goal has  always been will be so helpful, and it can evolve over time, but I really encourage you today to ask  yourself what is important to you right now for yourself and for your trainees, and perhaps to be  doing this on a regular basis to make sure you're still going in the right direction  to be able to come back really to the core meaning that you find in this role.  Thank you. I appreciate that you've taken the time to listen, and I hope it's been helpful.

Video Summary

In this video, Dr. Meredith Bone, a pediatric critical care physician and former fellowship program director, shares tips and advice for new program directors in the healthcare field. She emphasizes the importance of joining and participating in program director and medical educator communities and organizations to stay up to date with changes in the field and learn from other program leaders. Dr. Bone also emphasizes the need for program directors to familiarize themselves with local, national, board, and program accreditation requirements, and to address any potential gaps in meeting these requirements. She highlights the importance of effective communication, accountability, and setting clear expectations for faculty, staff, and trainees. Additionally, she encourages program directors to reflect on their own strengths and weaknesses as leaders and to develop a personal professional development plan. Finally, she advises program directors to consistently remind themselves of their purpose and goals as leaders in order to make informed decisions and stay focused on the well-being and growth of their trainees.

Asset Subtitle

Professional Development and Education, Administration, 2022

Asset Caption

Leaders are often thrust into new positions unexpectedly. Healthcare practitioners often assume new leadership positions both within their clinical area of expertise, such as medical directorships, and also in new administrative leadership opportunities. It is well recognized that hospital leadership positions filled with clinicians are far more successful than those without. As clinicians transition into new leadership positions, there are many pitfalls and perils that even the most experienced leader should avoid. The purpose of this session is to provide an opportunity for clinicians who have transitioned into key administrative and leadership positions to describe their personal lessons learned.

Meta Tag

Content Type Presentation

Knowledge Area Professional Development and Education

Knowledge Area Administration

Knowledge Level Advanced

Membership Level Select

Tag Team Leadership

Tag Workforce

Year 2022

Keywords

Dr. Meredith Bone

pediatric critical care physician

program director

healthcare field

medical educator communities

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