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| Adam Grant |
One of Dr. Grant's major research interests is the idea of motivating humans. He developed this interest at the University of Michigan where he was an undergrad, and he worked at a university fund-raising call-center. The job is known for being taxing and boring, but Grant desperately wanted to figure out how to increase production. His solution was to bring in students that had benefitted from the call-center's funds. Every week, a different student came in to share stories of being first-generation college students that saw the scholarships as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attend college, stores of being elated to pursue a humanistic post-college path like Teach for America because they weren't drowning in student loans. As Grant predicted, productivity almost doubled.
That constant motivation is the same underlying idea that drives the incredible success of institutions like Alcoholics Anonymous. The secret behing AA is not that they have an incredible message, it's that they keep you coming back every week, and they keep giving you just enough motivation to keep at it for another week or another day or however often you attend meeting. AA constantly replenishes your motivation to achieve the goal of staying sober. sidenote - In my opinion, this is one of the top reasons for organized religion, but that sounds like a topic for another day.
So how does this come back to med school?
One of the frequent complaints I hear from med students is, "I'm just not motivated anymore." The first week or two of a block aren't bad. Most of us had a weekend or a vacation to spend some time away from school, doing whatever we do out of school, and coming back refreshed. But that motivation juice doesn't last long, soon we're falling behind, and we're growing increasingly sick and tired of studying. sidenote - one of my philosophies with physician burnout is that you have to minimize the time you study while you're absolutely sick and tired of it. Sometimes when you study, you feel productive, and it's going great. This is a good time to study. Then, there are other times when it's an absolute struggle, you can't focus, and you find yourself hating yourself more and more after every slide. The more time you spend studying in this second "hating-your-life" zone is when you're creeping towards physician burnout.
Med school is no different than the university fund-raising call-center. We need constant motivation. So here's my half-baked idea: Why not have patient/ex-patient volunteers from the hospital speak to students every month?
I can just imagine it. Do you guys remember the first lecture of the year, when Dr. McEvoy showed a picture of her daughter Ansley that had leukemia? What if he took it a step further and brought her in to chat with the class about how much she loved her doctors?
see you on the other side,
from ken
enjoy sidenote in 140 characters or less @kensidenotelife.
Great idea, Ken! Often I feel like the emphasis is focused on the problems with the medical system and how we aren't going to get paid much and will be in debt for a long time, which often leaves me disheartened. I think the biggest gain I get out of the Partner's visits and volunteering at Crisis is a reminder of why I am going to medical school and seeing how the basic knowledge we are learning now gets implemented into real life patient care. I think having patients come to share their stories would be a great thing to add to maybe the Dean's Receptions every month or something along those lines.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I agree that is probably the one silver lining with hospital visits - getting to interact with patients and hear their stories, even if we can't do anything to help. And having this as a part of a dean's reception could be a nice way to work it in. thanks for your thoughts!
DeleteReally like your idea. Definitely would be a good reminder to students to see why students and even current doctors wanted to become doctors in the first place. Just expanding on the idea in general, I feel it would be great two way cycle if the discussions included patients with continuing medical problems or with negative experiences. This could act as a way to remind doctors/future doctors that nothing is a grantee in medicine, old ways don't always work, and there is still lots of ground to cover. Also, I think it would be a nice reminder to patients that the doctors due care about their personal problems and concerns and are working to improve there treatment methods. At the end of the day medicine is a relationship between patient and doctor, great idea to remind both parties what its about.
ReplyDeleteAlso liked your comment about not studying when things are clicking. You can definitely pick up a negative association with studying if you try to force it. Like writers block, you can get study block.
Yeah great point. We definitely need more creative ways to improve the quality of those relationships. Making an opportunity for both sides to come together in a friendly environment would be a good example.
DeleteThis is a full-baked idea for sure. It's one of those things that makes so much sense it's amazing it isn't happening already. My friends at medical schools all over the country often tell me their most memorable experiences are meeting patients and hearing their stories - both positive and negative. This is probably the single-most effective way to maintain med student morale (or for that matter, physician and researcher morale at all levels). In the lab I worked in we studied alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency, and once a year a group of alpha 1 patients would come to our lab to see what research we were doing and to tell us their stories. It was definitely one of the most inspiring and memorable days of the year. For me, it's a win-win-win situation.
ReplyDelete1. Students are reminded of why they love medicine.
2. It's a better way to learn material, because you're much more likely to remember something if you have a strong emotion to attach it to.
3. It's empowering for the patients to talk about their disease to future/current doctors.
Maybe this is something a student group at MUSC could start?
Yeah it makes even more sense for lab scientists who never see patients and are so far removed from the process. This is definitely a feasible idea.
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