There are many great things about working at Stanford including getting to work with amazing people doing amazing things.
One of them is Ankeet Udani senior resident committed to a career in education. He has led an effort with Drs. Harrison, Chu, and Wang to launch a new innovative educational program with the acronym ImPRINT (Intern PReparedness using INnovations in Teaching).
The addition of our categorical program with 8 positions has been well received, and we have an expanding number of Stanford anesthesia residents completing internships in the San Francisco Bay Area (n=9 other interns are driving distance from our campus).
This group of 17 participates in monthly afternoon sessions. The goals of the course are to:
1) prepare interns for common clinical scenarios encountered during internship,
2) encourage teamwork, camaraderie, and wellbeing among the intern class,
3) nurture a relationship with other people in our anesthesia department,
4) use state of the art tools and innovations in teaching, and
5) have some FUN while doing this!
Most sessions are structured using the “flipped classroom” model. The participants watch a short podcast covering a topic before attending each session. Each afternoon begins at the Goodman Immersive Learning Center with lunch, followed by a 40-minute group discussion facilitated by a faculty expert.
For example, Dr. Emily Ratner moderates our ‘Physician Wellness’ module, Dr. David Soran our ‘Acute MI on the Wards’ module, and Dr. Erin Hennessey our ‘COPD exacerbation’ module.
After the discussion, learners spend 90-minutes in high-fidelity simulation or task training, practicing and deconstructing the relevant clinical scenario. We end each session with a 20-minute group debriefing covering and summarizing the module’s events.
We are excited with the response we have gotten from our interns so far, and will continue to innovate our teaching methods to best fit the learning styles of our students.
Dr. Louise Wen, a categorical intern at Stanford, reflects on ImPRINT:
“IMPRINT is definitely one of the highlights of my intern experience. Every month I look forward to spending an enjoyable and fun afternoon with my fellow anesthesia residents who are doing their internship year in the Bay Area. These meetings create the space for us to relax over lunch and build our personal and professional relationships with each other.
The format of our learning uniquely ‘flips the classroom.’ We watch an 18-minute online lecture at our own convenience so that when we convene, we jump right into interactive and experiential learning activities that are focused on developing skills to make us better interns. So far, these exercises have included crisis scenarios in the high-fidelity simulator, faculty-led small group discussions on topics such as the physiology of CPR, and guided experiences in relaxation and mindfulness.
Our most recent IMPRINT session on resident wellness was an unexpected treat. Dr. Ratner guided us through calming breathing exercises and a short meditation. We then enjoyed a walk to the Main Oval on the main undergraduate campus where we sat on the expansive sea of green grass, surrounded by majestic palm trees, radiant sunlight, and a clear sky. We continued to practice exercises in mindful communication to learn how to process stressful experiences from our intern year. By the end of the session, I felt surprisingly energetic and rejuvenated, very much appreciating our department’s investment in resident wellness.”