Congratulations to Dr. Patricia Kao, Associate Professor in the Division of Nephrology, who has been chosen to receive the prestigious Carol B. and Jerome T. Loeb Teaching Fellow for 2017-2019.
Established in 2004 with a generous gift by Mr. and Mrs. Loeb and supported by the BJH Foundation, the Loeb Teaching Fellows program promotes the use of innovative teaching ideas to enhance the education of residents and medical students. Fellowship recipients receive $50,000 per year for two years and will devote a significant portion of their time to teaching and program/curriculum development.
Dr. Kao, with the support of the Division of Medical Education, launched the Washington University Teaching Physician Pathway (WUTPP) in October 2016. The WUTPP is the first structured resident teaching physician pathway here at Washington University.
“The mission of WUTPP is to prepare interested medicine residents with the knowledge, skills, experience, and mentorship to develop as competent and inspired clinician-educators, and as future leaders in medical education,” says Kao. As WUTPP Director, Dr. Kao designed the curriculum and recruited the inaugural class of teaching pathway residents in December 2016.
Dr. Kao says that with the support of the Loeb Teaching Fellowship, she plans to expand the WUTPP curriculum through programmatic development and increased collaboration with undergraduate medical school course directors.
The pathway curriculum kicks off with a two-week didactic medical education course for WUTPP residents. This is led by Dr. Kao and several other Washington University faculty members. It encompasses topics such as learning theory, curriculum design, presentation skills, assessment methods and mentoring. Included are professional development workshops on creating effective curriculum vitae and clinical educator portfolios. WUTPP residents will also perform self- and peer-assessments of teaching sessions using a novel video-based classroom observation tool. Residents will then put these skills into practice as they design curriculum and lead sessions for medical school and graduate medical education courses.
“The pathway residents will have active teaching roles in all four years of the medical school curriculum,” she says. “The role of the residents will be to develop clinical cases that will be taught in small groups, large groups, or online during the pre-clinical years, then re-visited during the MS3 medicine rotation and again in the MS4 Capstone course with progressively higher order learning objectives.”
Each WUTPP resident will also design and conduct a mentored medical education research project in one of the following areas: innovative curriculum development, inter-professional education, learning theory, or assessment of performance in graduate medical education.
“At the end of my two-year Loeb Teaching Fellowship term, I expect that the WUTPP curriculum will be fully-integrated into the undergraduate medical school curriculum at Washington University St. Louis, enhancing longitudinal themes and providing for the vertical integration of clinical cases,” says Dr. Kao. “Through their involvement in WUTPP, pathway residents will also evolve as inspired clinician educators, preparing them as future leaders in the education of medical school learners of all levels.”
Barnes-Jewish Hospital voluntary clinical faculty, Washington University School of Medicine clinical and/or investigator track faculty are eligible to apply for the Loeb Teaching Fellow. Two fellowships are awarded each year. Also receiving the Loeb Teaching Fellow for 2017-2019 was Dr. Sabrina Nuñez, Assistant Professor, Division of Medical Education.