Innovative Teaching Club elevates hospitalist medical education
Hospital Medicine is a medical specialty focused on providing comprehensive care to patients in the hospital, or inpatient setting. Physicians (known as "hospitalists") are responsible for managing and treating a wide variety of complex and coexisting medical conditions.
Because they are based on the hospital wards, hospitalists are more available to teach, supervise trainees, and provide direct patient care. Hospitalists are integral to medical education, bridging the gap between clinical experience and theoretical knowledge for future healthcare professionals.
Teaching Club origins
Dr. Alexandra (Randi) Morrison, clinical associate professor (General Internal Medicine) conceived the idea for a Teaching Club in 2020.
“As the Harborview Inpatient Clinical Teaching Champion, I met with each new attending before they started their first ward rotation to talk about what to expect on wards, answer any questions, and generally help them feel supported in their role,” she said. “That year we had 12 new faculty starting and I wondered how I could find the time for so many individual sessions.”
Teaching Club was a way to reach the whole group at once. The original idea evolved into a continuous opportunity for both new and seasoned Harborview hospitalist faculty to engage in discussions about medical education.
Teaching Club was originally called Education Collaboration Happy Hour, to emphasize that it was an informal peer gathering. “The thought was you pour yourself a glass of wine or a fizzy water, put your dog or your kid in your lap, and hang out in a safe space with colleagues to talk through whatever aspect of medical education was on your mind,” said Morrison.
For the first few years, each Teaching Club topic depended on who showed up that day and what was on their minds. To keep it approachable and informal, there was no specific agenda.
Morrison attributes much of the program's initial success to the COVID lockdown when faculty were hungry for collegial interaction. After a new faculty member referred to it as a teaching club they changed the name.
Building on success
In 2023, Morrison and co-host Dr. Anna Hagan expanded the scope of Teaching Club to include the University of Washington Medical Center-Montlake and VA hospitalist groups.
They recruited hosts from those sites (Drs. Katie Raskob from Montlake, and Anila Finnegan and Miriam Schwarz from the VA) and their influx of knowledge, enthusiasm, and wisdom took Teaching Club to a whole new level.
“We often have faculty from all 3 sites on the zoom calls, which has been wonderful for broadening our education and collegial ties,” says Morrison.
“There is an immense amount of experience and collective wisdom in our group, and Teaching Club is one way to access and harness that.”
After enlisting their Montlake and VA hosts, the group modified the format to begin the meeting with 10 minutes of didactics to stimulate discussion, with the host moderating.
The new format allows them to include an evaluation link for participants to complete at the end.
“There are a shrinking number of opportunities for faculty to earn evaluations and yet they are still a crucial part of the promotion process,” says Morrison, “so these Teaching Club evaluations can help our hosts get the recognition they deserve for their educational expertise.”
After each meeting, the host sends out an email to the hospitalists summarizing the discussion and providing some best practice pearls and often a journal article so that everyone can benefit from the group wisdom even if they couldn’t make it to the session.
The overall feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. While they usually have a small group attending live (around 2-7 participants), those who haven't attended a session still mention how valuable the email summaries are. Additionally, the sessions often spark discussions among colleagues afterward.
“I’ve learned I work with the most amazing faculty I could hope for,” says Morrison. “We don’t often get to see each other in action, so we don’t have the benefit of observation to understand how many varied styles, approaches, and opinions there are in medical education. There is an immense amount of experience and collective wisdom in our group, and Teaching Club is one way to access and harness that."
Teaching club topics
Topics have included giving effective feedback, strategies for efficient rounding, managing teams with dysfunctional relationships, setting expectations, bedside teaching, autonomy versus supervision, unintentional bias in evaluations, writing letters of recommendations, and AI in medical education. Sometimes someone is having a challenging time with a learner or a team and asks for help with how to approach the situation.
Lessons learned
Morrison says she’s learned many valuable lessons from this process.
“My own practice has been profoundly impacted by these thoughtful discussions about how we can be better for our learners. There is also clearly a need for a place to be vulnerable and honest about our challenges, biases, failures, and fears as educators. We follow Vegas rules in Teaching Club—what is said in Teaching Club stays in Teaching Club—and we foster an atmosphere of respect, empathy, and generosity that allows participants to feel safe and supported.”
Teaching Club is led by five faculty educators and hospitalists who work at our three main sites (Harborview Medical Center, University of Washington Medical Center, and VA Puget Sound Health Care System:
(L-R) Drs. Anila Finnegan, clinical associate professor, Anna Hagan, clinical assistant professor, Randi Morrison, clinical associate professor, Katie Raskob, assistant professor of clinical practice, and Miriam Schwarz, clinical assistant professor.