Tips for IM attendings – Chapter 5 – The Learning Atmosphere

As ward team leaders, we have a responsibility to positively influence the team culture. We hold positions of power – we do grade everyone on the team. Students may want us to write letters of recommendation for residency. Residents may want the same for fellowship applications. So we start with a large psychological size. But large psychological size may interfere with learning. The learning atmosphere domain requires attention to certain interpersonal skills. We have a responsibility to decrease our psychological size. We all remember unapproachable attending physicians. We remember those who did not learn our names during medical school. We remember those who never gave positive feedback. Do not be one of those physicians. In our research these are the phrases that clustered in the learning atmosphere domain. 1. Be approachable—not intimidating (1) 2. Insist on respect for all team members (16) 3. Showing enthusiasm (2) 4. Showing appreciation of team members for work performed (5) 5. Giving positive and negative feedback to all team members (12) 6. Allow room for mistakes (28) The key feature here is the team leader’s understanding that he/she leads a team. We do not do all the work ourselves. The best attending physicians embrace graduated responsibility and get each team member to work towards great patient care and personal growth. Nothing magic happens the day we transition from resident (or fellow) to attending physician. We all hope to improve as ph...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs