Equally important was the staff at each site. “Without that support system, the
doctors would’ve bailed,” Mollie said. “There were the student support coordinators,
and people that were managing this medical education program. We didn’t dump it
on the hospital, and we didn’t dump it on the doctors. The FSU College of Medicine
maintained the responsibility for the success of the students from Day One.”
At first, the doctors were skeptical. What we were proposing was much different
from the way they themselves had been trained. Some of them were thinking:
“You can’t turn out a good doctor if you don’t do it the old-fashioned way.” So
we had to show them that, in a sense, it really was the “old-fashioned way” – that
is, physician and student in a relationship that was similar to an apprenticeship.
One of Ocie’s jobs was showing these community doctors that, yes, they could
be good teachers.
“We went to the community and worked with physicians in developing educational
objectives,” he said. “So they knew what the students were supposed to
receive and where they were supposed to be with objective evaluations at the end.
They really enjoyed it. They felt like they really were faculty because they were
not just having a student pass through their office. They were involved in the
actual development of the program.”
The next step was showing them how to work with the students.
“We kept emphasizing to the physicians that they were not just going to be
stuck with a student and wondering what to do,” Ocie said. “With their help,
we developed a continuing education program. I gave them a lot of advice and
suggestions about integrating students into their practice: Make sure you finish
up at the end with the patient, but you don’t have to be in there the whole time.
Choose patients who will enjoy participating in the students’ education.
“So it was actually quite easy once the physician got the idea: ‘We just want
you to practice medicine and take enough time to let the student see some of
your patients and tell them what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.’ Many
of these clerkship faculty also gave the students reading assignments, and they
would sit down and discuss topics. That’s far more effective than a lecture. And
that was not something that we required them to do. They did that on their own
initiative. And they said over and over and over again: ‘Teaching required me to
be more of a student.’”
Just a heavy dose of introductory coaching was not enough, of course.
Transforming these community physicians into confident faculty members
required continual follow-up training. That’s where Dennis Baker came in, as
associate dean for faculty development. More than anyone else at the college, he
would get to know every road leading from Tallahassee to our regional campuses.
We established a culture where teaching was viewed as extremely important, not
secondary to research, not secondary to clinical work.
We also gave our clerkship faculty the education, equipment and opportunity to
really get into state-of-the-art information technology. They found that it saved them
time and allowed them to keep themselves up-to-date better. They could interact
with the students a lot more.
Breaking the Mold | 31