Half Full Glasses Using Appreciative Inquiry to Recruit

Half Full Glasses Using Appreciative Inquiry to Recruit and Retain Clerkship Preceptors Peter Ham, MD, Steven Heim, MD, Sunhee Park, Medical Student

How do we recruit and retain our best teachers? • Addressing problems? – Time – Money – Effort

What is good about having a student? • Appreciative Inquiry Concept

Alternate Title… • “Other than that, Ms. Lincoln, how did you like the play? ”

Objectives • • Explain Appreciative Inquiry Present findings from 25 interviews with community preceptors. Explore themes of why family doctors enjoy having students. Consider how this information and approach may be used for strategic planning in clerkships?

Appreciative Inquiry • Appreciative Inquiry: …is the concept of creating positive change by appreciating and asking about what’s going right instead of what’s going wrong. • Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change by David L. Cooperrider and Diana Whitney.

Appreciative Inquiry • • Elicits enthusiasm as opposed to negativity Encourages what is already happening Promotes self awareness of worth Avoids creating expectation that you will fix problems

We interviewed family physicians (clerkship preceptors): • Describe a great experience with a student • Tell us how you create great experiences for students • What can we learn from your successful teaching experiences?

Results • 25 interviews • 15 Community Doctors • 10 Academic Faculty

Main Themes • Family physicians find students praise of their humanistic qualities affirming. • Family physicians enjoy mentoring students and being part of their transformation. • Family physicians hope to influence students and serve the future of primary care. • Family physicians appreciate the skills (language, humanistic, computer, and clinical) students bring to the rotation.

Family physicians find students praise of their humanistic qualities affirming. • “a couple of months later the student came to me. She said, “you are the doctor that I want to be. ”

Family physicians enjoy mentoring students …. • “I remember my family medicine rotation was the place where I really did start to care about people beyond just making a good grade. ”

Family physicians hope to influence students and serve the future of primary care. • “The reason I do this is to let them see why I fell in love with family medicine. ”

Family physicians appreciate the skills students bring to the rotation. • Language – “The student spoke spanish… I can’t even describe, it was like the sun burst out of the clouds…suddenly the patient was completely at ease. This was going to be an interaction where there was trust. It just made all the difference in the world. ”

… Student Skills • Computers – “one of the things I look forward to with a student is they take excellent notes in the computer. ”

… Student Skills • Time to look up information – “I will say to myself, I used to know this. So I ask the student to read up on it and we’ll talk about it tomorrow. So I kind of make the students work for me a little bit. ”

So how can we use these stories and themes? • The process of Appreciative Inquiry itself may in itself encourage people.

Talk differently about the clerkship • A chance to show yourself, your practice, and your community to someone who is at a moment of transformation. – Affirming for you – Experience transformation – Influence student

Remind what students bring • • • Time Energy Humanism Language skills Computer skills

The Good Wolf Story • There is a story of a Cherokee elder sitting with his grandchildren. He says to them, “In every life there is a terrible fight – a fight between two wolves. One is evil: he is fear, anger, envy, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, and deceit. The other is good: joy, serenity, humility, confidence, generosity, truth, gentleness, and compassion. ” And one of the children asks, “Grandfather, which wolf will win? ” The elder looks him in the eye and says, “The one you feed. ”

“You are the doctor I want to be” Positive Stories are Everywhere, Maybe Even Under Your Chair.