Thursday, February 28, 2013
Cultivating creativity in medical training, FedEx style
Over the holidays, I took full advantage of this opportunity to read a book from start to finish. I chose Daniel Pink's Drive. It was actually recommended by @Medrants and I read it partly to understand why pay-for-performance often fails to accomplish its goals for complex tasks, such as patient care. However, the thing I found most interesting about this book was the way in which creativity is deliberately inspired and cultivated by industry.
I could not help but think about why we don't deliberately nurture creativity in medical trainees. Why am I so interested in creativity? Perhaps it is the countless trainees I have come across who are recruited to medical school and residency because of their commitment to service, and who also happen to have an exceptionally creative spirit. Unfortunately, I worry too many of them have their spirit squashed during traditional medical training.
I am not alone. I have seen experts argue the need to go from the traditional medical education that is fundamentally oppressive, inhibits critical thinking, and rewards conformity. Apart from the criticism, it is of course understandable why medical training does not cultivate creativity. Traditional medical practice does not value creativity. Patients don't equate "creative doctors" as the "best doctors." In fact, doctors who may be overly creative are accused of quackery.
So, why bother with cultivating creativity in medical training? Well, for one thing, creativity is tightly linked to innovation, something we can all benefit from in medical education and healthcare delivery. While patients may not want a "creative approach" to their medical care, creativity is the key spice in generating groundbreaking medical research, developing a new community or global health outreach program, or testing an innovative approach to improving the system of care that we work in.
Lastly, one key reason to cultivate creativity in medical trainees is to keep all those hopeful and motivated trainees engaged so that they can find joy in work and realize their value and potential as future physicians. In short, the healthcare system stands to benefit from the changes that are likely to emanate from creative inspired practicing physicians.
So what can we do to cultivate and promote creativity among medical trainees? While there are many possibilities including the trend to implement scholarly concentrations programs like the one I direct, one idea I was intrigued by was the use of a "FedEx Day."
FedEx Days originated in an Australian software company, but became popularized by Daniel Pink and others in industry. For a 24-hour period, employees are instructed to work on anything they want, provided it is not part of their regular job. The name "FedEx" stuck because of the "overnight delivery" of the exceptionally creative idea to the team, although there are efforts being undertaken to provide this idea with a new name.
Some of the best ideas have come from FedEx Days or similar approaches, like 3M's post-its or Google's Gmail. I haven't fully figured out how duty hours play into this yet, so before you report me or write this off, consider the following. Borrowing on the theories of Daniel Pink, we would conclude that trainees would gladly volunteer their time to do this because of intrinsic motivation to work on something that they could control and create. And to all the medical educators who can't possibly imagine how would we do this during a jam packed training program, let's brainstorm a creative solution together!
Vineet Arora, MD, is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. She is Associate Program Director for the Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship & Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of hospital care. She is also an academic hospitalist, supervising internal medicine residents and students caring for general medicine patients, and serves as a career advisor and mentor for several medical students and residents, and directs the NIH-sponsored Training Early Achievers for Careers in Health (TEACH) Research program, which prepares and inspires talented diverse Chicago high school students to enter medical research careers. This post originally appeared on her blog, FutureDocs.
Labels: FutureDocs, guest post, medical education, Vineet Arora
posted by Vineet Arora, MD at
11:00 AM
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Members of the American College of Physicians contribute posts from their own sites to ACP Internistand ACP Hospitalist. Contributors include:
Albert Fuchs,
MD
Albert Fuchs, MD, FACP, graduated from the
University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, where he
also did his internal medicine training. Certified by the American
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And Thus, It Begins
Amanda Xi, ACP Medical
Student Member, is a first-year medical student at the OUWB School
of Medicine, charter class of 2015, in Rochester, Mich., from which
she which chronicles her journey through medical training from day
1 of medical school.
Zackary Berger
Zackary Berger, MD, ACP Member, is a primary care doctor and
general internist in the Division of General Internal Medicine at
Johns Hopkins. His research interests include doctor-patient
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Controversies in Hospital
Infection Prevention
Run by three ACP
Fellows, this blog ponders vexing issues in infection prevention
and control, inside and outside the hospital. Daniel J Diekema, MD,
FACP, practices infectious diseases, clinical microbiology, and
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db's Medical Rants
Robert M. Centor, MD, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating
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DrDialogue
Juliet K. Mavromatis, MD, FACP, provides a conversation about
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Dr. Mintz' Blog
Matthew Mintz, MD, FACP, has practiced internal medicine for more
than a decade and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at an
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patients.
Everything
Health
Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, blogs about the rapid changes in science,
medicine, health and healing in the 21st century.
FutureDocs
Vineet Arora, MD, FACP, is Associate Program Director for the
Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship &
Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of
Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty
hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of
hospital care. She is also an academic hospitalist.
Glass Hospital
John H. Schumann, MD, FACP, provides transparency on the workings
of medical practice and the complexities of hospital care,
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Ryan Madanick, MD, ACP Member, is a gastroenterologist at the
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I'm dok
Mike Aref, MD, PhD, FACP, is an academic hospitalist with an
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William Hersh, MD, FACP, Professor and Chair, Department of Medical
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David Katz, MD
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACP, is an internationally renowned
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Just Oncology
Richard Just, MD, ACP Member, has 36 years in clinical practice of
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KevinMD
Kevin Pho, MD, ACP Member, offers one of the Web's definitive sites
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MD
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Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, addresses the joys and challenges of
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Elaine Schattner, MD, FACP, shares her ideas on education, ethics
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Mired in MedEd
Alexander M.
Djuricich, MD, FACP, is the Associate Dean for Continuing Medical
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blogs about medical education.
More Musings
Rob Lamberts, MD, ACP Member, a med-peds and general practice
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David M. Sack, MD, FACP, practices general gastroenterology at a
small community hospital in Connecticut. His blog is a series of
musings on medicine, medical care, the health care system and
medical ethics, in no particular order.
Reflections of a Grady
Doctor
Kimberly Manning, MD, FACP, reflects on the personal side of being
a doctor in a community hospital in Atlanta.
The Blog of Paul Sufka
Paul Sufka,
MD, ACP Member, is a board certified rheumatologist in St. Paul,
Minn. He was a chief resident in internal medicine with the
University of Minnesota and then completed his fellowship training
in rheumatology in June 2011 at the University of Minnesota
Department of Rheumatology. His interests include the use of
technology in medicine.
Technology in (Medical)
Education
Neil Mehta, MBBS, MS, FACP, is interested in use of technology in
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Peter A. Lipson,
MD
Peter A. Lipson, MD, ACP Member, is a practicing internist and
teaching physician in Southeast Michigan. The blog, which has been
around in various forms since 2007, offers musings on the
intersection of science, medicine, and culture.
Why is American Health Care So Expensive?
Janice
Boughton, MD, FACP, practiced internal medicine for 20 years before
adopting a career in hospital and primary care medicine as a locum
tenens physician. She lives in Idaho when not traveling.
World's Best Site
Daniel Ginsberg, MD,
FACP, is an internal medicine physician who has avidly applied
computers to medicine since 1986, when he first wrote medically
oriented computer programs. He is in practice in Tacoma,
Washington.
Other blogs of note:
American Journal of
Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine
publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in
internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and
community-based practice.
Clinical
Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, MD, ACP
Member, associate program director at New York University Medical
Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents
and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news,
commentary and more.
Interact MD
Michael Benjamin, MD, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so
he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the
Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news
of the day.
PLoS Blog
The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a
blog.
White Coat
Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by an emergency
room physician.
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