Learning Leadership

This past Thursday-Friday was the annual Internal Medicine Residency PGY-2 (means a second year resident) Leadership Retreat. At the retreat, we had several lectures, breakout discussion sessions, and role play practice in how to employ leadership skills that help foster a positive learning and working environment. The lecture and discussion series was led by facilitators who have been trained through the Stanford Faculty Development Center and utilizes their Clinical Teaching Program curriculum. The focus was for how we, as residents, can facilitate a positive learning environment for incoming interns and for medical students on the team. It also focused on how to set goals for an inpatient team, and how to best use your attending as a resource. Overall, it was a great retreat. Though many people think that some people are natural born leaders, I think many leadership qualities, if not most, can be learned and trained. Sometimes those who have had some kind of training or learning in how to be a leader are more effective.

Some of the titles of the sessions and lectures were: Learning climate, control of session, communication of goals, and feedback. I especially liked how as each session followed, the lessons from the prior sessions became utilized. An example was the role play I was involved in during the "Communication of goals" workshop. I had to correct an intern on the team and set goals to make the team more efficient and thorough. I found myself using many of the skills from "Control of session" to direct the conversation the way it needed to move.

Although we had mostly work-related lectures and discussion, there was time for some activities as well. A group of my fellow med-peds residents went canoeing and kayaking on the lake by the resort we were staying at. It was a lot of fun to get out and do some paddling. I rode a kayak and got quite an arm workout from the paddling across this huge lake. Later that night we had kareoke. Many of the faculty physicians, including my program director and the chairman of medicine, participated. One of the most hilarious moments came from seeing my program director sing Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" wearing a feather boa and pink wig. The med-peds girls submitted a song for us med-peds guys to sing that was secret until we went up to sing. We ended up singing "It's Raining Men". The kareoke ended with the whole room, faculty physicians and residents alike, singing Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.

More lectures occured on Friday, but were more varied. We discussed our continuous quality improvement project requirement and how to apply to fellowships. There were a few smaller workshops, one of which was on thinking about how we think. The books "How Doctors Think" and "Blink" are now on my list to read. Soon though, after I finish one or two others I have already.