BNGAP Conference at Stanford
Yana and Leo Vaks-Aliaga
Building the Next Generation of Academic Physicians (BNGAP) hosted an academic medicine career development conference at Stanford on Jan 13, 2018. It was a fantastic experience!
The morning had several great plenary sessions followed by workshops in the afternoon.
Dr. Michelle Guy, Professor of Medicine at UCSF, gave an overview of the current state of diversity in academic medicine. African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans together make up about 30% of the US population, yet only 6.9% of academic faculty in US medical schools. The numbers are even more sinister when you consider that most of this 6.9% consists of faculty at the assistant professor level. The percentages drop steeply as faculty rank increases. She included statistics from Yu et al. (2013) who compiled data from a 12-year period on faculty and leadership diversity in academic medicine. That study showed that based on the rate of minuscule increase in the percentage of minority academic physicians over the 12-year study period, it would take nearly 1000 years for the proportion of Black physicians to catch up to the percentage of African Americans in the US population.
Dr. Lloyd Minor, Dean of the Stanford School of Medicine, shared his insights and lessons learned on leadership. This was a great talk, I was so glad we got to hear it. One of the best parts was this message: Your success as a leader is largely determined by your ability to listen, learn and modify your decisions based on what you hear - much more so than by getting it right the very first time. There are countless books and seminars about being a visionary charismatic leader, but far fewer on being a really great listener. Developing your emotional intelligence is a key component to being a successful leader.
Dr. Bonnie Maldonado described the roles and responsibilities of various academic medicine career paths, ranging from clinician educator to department chair and medical school dean. She also shared her story of being told she should go back to her community after med school & residency, that there was no place for her in academics. She is now Professor of Pediatrics and the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Diversity at Stanford. She looked out at the audience and enthusiastically said, "You WILL help your communities by being in academics. We need all of you in all these positions!"
Dr. Edward Callahan, Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Personnel at UC Davis, provided a transparent overview to the academic appointment and promotion process, giving practical guidance on how to maximally prepare ourselves. More poignantly though, he shared his insight on how we can and do fit into the academic medical hierarchy. "If you can get an idea of what is feeding your soul, then you can get an idea of what role you can play in academic medicine." There were so many great pieces of sage advice - simple things yet essential and powerful. "Asking for help is the hardest thing, we're all trained to be able to do everything on our own... Asking for help allows you to get to your goals more effectively and makes you a leader. By asking for help, you become a leader."
The afternoon had several interactive workshops. I attended: Educational Scholarship led by Dr. John Davis, Building a Supportive Team/Mentorship led by Dr. Efrain Talamantes, and Finding an Academic Position After Residency led by Dr. Fatima Rodriguez. They were all useful and well-delivered. These workshops are published on MedEdPORTAL. You can search for them on this open-access journal.
Thank you Dr. J.P. Sanchez, Dr. Reena Thomas, Dr. Wendy Caceres, and everyone involved for creating such a rich and essential learning experience!
-Leo