Tips for IM Attendings – Chapter 17 – Being positive

Yesterday on a plane I read Ellen Latham’s book Push.  She founded Orangetheory Fitness. The book has a large portion of autobiography, telling the story of how she eventually developed the workout that became OTF. A large part of her book surprised me.  I expected a story about exercise, but interwoven in that story she champions positive coaching.  She attributes this philosophy to her father. When you go to OTF, the coaching is always positive.  Coaches work to help you improve.  They never denigrate. And this is today’s lesson for IM Attendings.  Our job involves coaching our learners.  We want them to improve, and thus we need to use strategies to encourage our learners and help them improve. I think this strategy works: Student presents the HPI.  The HPI contains most of the necessary information, but misses some important information.  We can handle this situation in several ways.  Many attendings do not take the opportunity to help the student improve.  You first praise the student for taking a good history.  You then point out how to make the presentation sharper.  The idea here is that you “sell” your criticism through a process of taking good and making it better.  This maps perfectly into the model we experience at OTF.  We should give feedback immediately in a positive constructive way. Our student learners have paid dearly through tuition and fees.  We owe them, and should always remember that. Our resident learners have c...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs