Daniel Solomon, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Daniel Solomon is a clinician educator in the ID division at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He serves as the Associate Program Director for the Mass General Brigham ID fellowship, and the Fellowship Site Director at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is also the Associate Director for clinical learning in the Health Sciences and Technology Track at Harvard Medical School where he directs the foundational clinical skills course and oversees the clinical transition from the pre-clerkship phase to the clinical phase of medical school.
Medical education was my wormhole into academic medicine. As a student and a trainee, the clinicians I looked up to as role models were always my favorite teachers. I think there is a lovely parallel between clinical care and education – they are both about being in relationship with people. The medical educators that became my closest mentors are all rigorous, curious, and humanistic clinicians, and they brought that same spirit of curiosity and attention to their relationship with me as their student. It was through these role models that a career in medical education came into sharper focus – I wanted to become a physician that students looked up to as a role model of clinical excellence, and I saw that teaching and mentorship was an opportunity to have a meaningful impact on trainees that will be passed forward along to their patients and their trainees.
There are several pillars of how education is integrated in my current career. The first is education leadership at the medical school and fellowship level. I have learned that the leadership and administrative roles that do not always entail direct teaching are the major sources of funding for education and allow for higher level thinking about education design and methods. The second pillar is clinical teaching – I have tried to incorporate education into my clinical work as much as possible and I still attend on the gen med teaching service 2 weeks a year to work with residents. Finally, I am involved in formal didactic teaching at the medical school, residency, fellowship and CME level. These one-off experiences are often unfunded and may not offer longitudinal relationships with learners, but are super fun to design and challenge me to figure out how to connect with different audiences.
Research careers have their own set of challenges, but there is a clear track to becoming an independently funded researcher. In contrast, the path to becoming a clinician educator is not always obvious prospectively. So when I started out, I tried to lean in to any teaching opportunity that became available. These small teaching opportunities took a lot of effort without a lot of pay, but they were fun, they helped me improve my teaching skills, and I met important mentors and sponsors in the med-ed space. Over time, these smaller roles allowed me to grow into education leadership roles when they became available. I also participated in two medical education fellowships that helped me learn about adult learning theory, education scholarship, and practical teaching skills, and also connected me to a community of medical educators who have become peers and mentors.
In collaboration with colleagues at Harvard Medical School and the Engineering Catalyst program at MIT, I helped to develop a 3-day novel capstone experience for first year medical students. The capstone was centered around a single patient. On day 1 students participated in a clinical reasoning exercise that integrated concepts from their pre-clinical courses, using course directors as our expert discussants. On day 2 we challenged the students to identify research questions that could have impacted the patient’s care. On day 3 students got to meet the actual patient and hear about her experience with illness. Grounded in the narrative a real person’s illness, this pilot required students to apply their foundational knowledge to understand mechanisms and manifestations of disease, and challenged them to think about how research and innovation can impact patient outcomes. Based on the success of the pilot, this model is being expanded into a longitudinal course.
I have developed a small library of talks that I update every year (HIV for the internist, Lyme and tickborne diseases, Vaccine update, Intersection of ID and addiction medicine etc), and have had the opportunity to adapt the talks for a variety of audiences. By developing these focused areas of expertise within ID, I have had the opportunity to give Grand Rounds to clinical audiences around the country.
I love keeping in touch with trainees after they launch and seeing how their careers flourish. I recently attended a wedding of two of my former medical students – it was a good reminder that the most rewarding part of teaching is that personal connection to amazing trainees.