From 5 Questions to 5 Reflections: A Residency Leadership “Sign-Out” During COVID-19—Part 2

Editor’s note: This is the second of a 2-part blog post. Read the first part of this blog post, with an introduction and the first 3 reflections, here. 4. A crisis reveals the flaws of how we assign value. Scholarly output is an important part of what we do in academic medicine. We balance the tasks of running our program, caring for patients, and teaching with individual pursuits: research, curriculum development, implementation science, or quality improvement. During the pandemic, many of these academic efforts were necessarily placed on hold. This impacted some more than others, along the predictable lines of gender, promotion status, and time and resources outside of work. As residency leaders, the COVID-19 pandemic challenged us in every aspect of our jobs. We worked tirelessly in an environment demanding agility, resilience, and reimagination. We spent hours in planning meetings, modeling outcomes in various scenarios, communicating with a traumatized workforce, fielding questions from terrified patients and caregivers, and confronting new clinical demands. Our focus shifted from publications to hospital policies. Although many of us fell short on traditional academic pursuits, there was no shortage of scholarly output. It was just occurring outside of the normal process. These career-defining experiences were powerful and meaningful but are difficult to represent on a CV. The academic medical system has long valued a specific set of experiences and output ov...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Tags: Featured Guest Perspective COVID-19 leadership residency Source Type: blogs