Missed CORD? Here are a few take home thoughts from @BenAzan and @NupurGargMD. This is by no means meant to be comprehensive, but represents the learning points of a couple of senior residents at CORD.
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Education – Career in Academics:
- Strive to get where you want academically BUT don’t necessarily to have I keep going up hierarchy to be happy –
- Know thy self, if you are where you want to be, just bask in it
- Important to have mentors and identify them consciously
- Saying NO (to projects) important. Don’t say yes and not do it, that’s worst than saying no
- Always ask yourself: What is the end goal, chose projects based on that
- Make projects count twice (or more)
- When starting education project, plan/anticipate publication right from the start
- Have a system for keeping track of accomplishments. EVERYTHING remotely academic/education/innovative counts.
- FOAMed is now legitimate pathway to scholarship (1/4 of CORD was about FOAMed). Peer review publications still main currency though
- Know the promotion criteria at your institution (there is usually document)
- EM is small community: Network + don’t burn bridges, ever
Financial Planning for Young Faculty:
- Repay student loans ASAP
- Consider separate disability
insurance (employers provide but only while in that job) - Consider personal liability insurance: litigious society and MDs are targets
- Err on the side of live modestly
- Avoid having to work longer and harder to keep with your life style
- Think twice about the vacation home, unless you are turning into investment
Teaching:
- Limit lectures to 20 minutes
- Try to incorporate spaced repetition
- Explore Pecha Kucha (20 slides, 20 seconds per slide) as to improve junior presentations kills (forces condensing material, more volunteers for 7 min talk)
- Teaching Millennials:
- Short attention spans
- Experiential learning
- Group (less individual) learning, connected, collaborative learning experience
- Want to have work life balance
- Over Communicate
- Having a relaxed environment, but also need some limits
- Multimedia tools, multiple modalities
Conflict Resolution:
- There are 5 different techniques/approaches:
- Competing -> force your issues
- Collaboration -> both people are happy with solution, both get what they want, takes a lot of time
- Compromising -> Giving up something more than collaboration, a middle ground but giving up some of your ground
- Avoiding -> ignoring, can be used as temporizing measure, but if used to much, does not resolve any issues
- Accommodation -> give the other person whatever they want, ok for low priority issues
- Picking your battles: sometime use avoid or accommodation in low stakes cases, and reserving competing / collaboration, comprise in time you are more interested in outcome
- Consciously maintain ego in mind: Am I more concern about being right or finding best solution?
- Approach to conflict with consultant:
- State Facts
- Tell your perspective / story
- How do they see it
- Discussion
Entrepreneur in Academia:
- Know your contact, who owns the IP of your projects
- Can use Google Patent search
- Work with your patent office or innovation office
- Can have your institution pay for patenting fees (they may own or co-own patent subsequently, clarify co-ownership terms)
- To get angel investors: they don’t want your to also be working clinically, want you to be all in. Can start with a mix of clinical / entrepreneurial, but for major funding, many investors want 100% of your time on project.
- Take your passion and grow it
- Start things that feel right to you. Quit when it doesn’t feel right anymore
- Procrastination on projects can be a good thing, allows time for ideas to mature
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Many entrepreneurs end up leaving their academic institution when starting their company. To avoid that:
- Start project before you join
- Do something non-medical (avoids ownership disputes)
- Clearly work out ownership deal with your institution right from the start
CPC:
- Apparently, post-traumatic appendicitis is a thing
- Watch out for trauma as red earring to medical complaints