Introducing Medical Students to Careers in Medical Education

Abstract

Few avenues exist to familiarize medical students with careers as clinician-educators, and the clinician-educator career pathway has not been well defined. In this article, the authors describe how they integrated a career-oriented student track into the 2011 Northeast Group on Educational Affairs (NEGEA) annual retreat to introduce students to careers in medical education. Annual education conferences are principal sources of educational scholarship, networking, collaboration, and information sharing; as such, they represent attractive venues for early exposure to the culture of medical education. The authors' goal in creating the NEGEA conference student track was to excite students about careers in medical education by providing them with an array of opportunities for active involvement in both student-specific and general conference activities.The authors draw from their experience to provide a guide for recruiting student participants to career-building student tracks. They also offer a guide for developing future student tracks, based on their experience and grounded in social cognitive career theory. Although their focus is on medical education, they believe these guides will be useful for educators planning a conference-based student track in any field.

Introducing Trainees to Medical Education Activities and Opportunities for Educational Scholarship

“…Facilitators who are affirming, inspirational, and engaging have the potential to be viewed as role models and can positively influence interest in academia. 5,4 We worked with conference host leaders to identify facilitators who had received accolades from their institutional trainees for excellence in teaching and had a track record of completing presentations and publications with students as coauthors. Although these attributes are not necessary for a facilitator, they do further substantiate the facilitator's identity as a role model and experienced mentor who may assist in guiding trainees through the scholarship process.…”

“…1–4 Moreover, whereas student interest groups and research experiences provide trainees with an appreciation of the clinical and research pathways in academia, trainees have fewer opportunities to learn about the medical educator pathway. 5…”

“…Students may serve on their institution's curriculum committee, develop an elective, take part in a summer medical education program, or participate in their school's educator scholarly track. 5 There are also published resources to help medical students, residents, and faculty develop educational research projects. Such resources include instructions on how to write a scientific abstract, conduct a literature review, develop questions for an educational research project, publish a scientific manuscript, and negotiate authorship.…”

Pilot study: undergraduate sports & exercise medicine conferences: what role do they play?

“…Evidence has shown that conferences are principal sources of educational networking, collaboration and information sharing. 11 The conference ran as an extra-curricular event which consisted of six lecture talks lasting 40 min each. These were chosen to provide a wide variety of the different roles available in sports medicine and how they are facilitated by different practitioners such as surgeons, GPs, cardiologists, physiotherapists and endocrinologists.…”

“…10 Therefore, we felt our study would help gauge and understand the impact of undergraduate conferences on students' perceptions of the SEM field, based on the student feedback from the conference. 11 The conference ran as an extracurricular event which consisted of six lecture talks lasting 40 min each. These were chosen to provide a wide variety of the different roles available in sports medicine and how they are facilitated by different practitioners such as surgeons, GPs, cardiologists, physiotherapists and endocrinologists.…”