PG27 to Focus on Mastering Clinical Teaching Skills for Pulmonary & Critical Care

At ATS 2012 in San Francisco, one postgraduate course will address the concepts and skills needed to excel as a medical educator. PG27, “Mastering Clinical Teaching Skills for Pulmonary and Critical Care,” will cover fundamental principles in adult learning and practical skills for teaching, including crafting engaging lectures, fostering critical thinking, using educational technology and giving effective feedback. The format will rely heavily on interactive workshop sessions, in addition to larger group plenaries with audience participation. The course will also present key strategies and milestones for career success as a clinician-educator.

“Attendees will learn to recognize the unique needs of adult learners, and to identify strategies to address them and to make their teaching more effective both at the bedside and in the clinic,” said David H. Roberts, MD, associate director of the Carl J. Shapiro Institute for Education & Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who will co-chair the course with Henry E. Fessler, MD. “It will also teach how to provide one-on-one feedback to medical students, residents and fellows in a way that is useful, constructive and non-threatening, and the course will highlight the pathways to academic success and the key steps to promotion as a clinician-educator.”

The course, which will take place on Saturday, May 19, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, is sponsored by the Education Committee. The workshop-based format will give attendees the opportunity to talk with faculty members one-on-one and get the most out of the program.

“Many of us aspire to be outstanding clinician-educators with little training in the specific, professional skills to help us get there. This course can help fill that gap,” said Dr. Fessler, associate professor of medicine, fellowship program director and critical care clerkship director at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who encourages everyone who teaches to consider taking this course. “Whether you are teaching in the ICU or clinic every day, or only intermittently, this course will have something for everyone from new teachers just out of fellowship to those with decades of experience.”

To learn more about the course, please visit http://conference.thoracic.org.