Jessica Newman, DO, Associate Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Kansas School of Medicine
Jessica Newman is a small group (CBCL) leader in the KU School of Medicine, serves as SOM Infectious Diseases Threadhead, Phase I Block Clinical Content Advisor, Director of the KU SOM Main Campus Infectious Diseases Student Enrichment Experience and the Internal Medicine Student Chief Elective. She is also a Co-Director of the Internal Medicine Clerkship, an Internal Medicine Core Faculty member and Residency Program Infectious Diseases Subspecialty Education Coordinator. Additionally, she has membership in the KU SOM Academy of Medical Educators and serves on the IDSA Medical Education Community of Practice Mentorship Working Group.
As a medical student, participating in the learning team of an inpatient medicine service was the first time I really felt myself gravitating to the amazing energy of a medical learning team. The shared wins/losses and growth that can occur even over weeks cannot be matched. As soon as I served as an Internal Medicine Chief Resident, I was hooked on medical education. From that time, I served as a Core Faculty for our IM Residency, and after completing fellowship took on additional teaching roles specific to Infectious Diseases. I still am not sure which level of learner I love working with best!
As with all clinicians in Academic Medical Centers, I have the opportunity to teach our ID fellows, IM Residents, and Medical students on rounds and in outpatient clinics. I have been able to integrate education into a career by taking on leadership opportunities that incorporate programming, content creation, and management into my work. This "buys" me the chance to take students and residents along with me, mentoring their own budding medical education work and carving out opportunities for them to practice their skills and build upon scholarship.
In some manner, all physicians are educators, but what I found a passion for as a Chief Resident was creating teaching content, and I have been so blessed to find opportunities to do this in my roles in the KU SOM. As ID Threadhead I have a good number of instructional hours, but I also get to create ID Case-Based Collaborative Learning Sessions and add cases and clinical tie-ins to the content of our basic science professor lectures, which has been so rewarding. I created and manage a website we use for 4th-year student and resident rotators in ID to supplement their in-person learning on rounds, and this has really helped to fill in gaps for our learners. I have been so excited to work on my Student Chief Elective over the last couple of years and have overseen the creation of innumerable Case Conferences, Shelf reviews, a Survival Guide production, and more.
Medical Education Scholarship is something I did not get introduced to until after fellowship, and I would say I failed at this more than I have been successful, but one of the great things about having a growth mindset is being willing to try new things, explore problems with a fresh perspective and being willing to take learners along in your journey as these early experiences will serve as guideposts to them in their future projects.
Coaching and mentorship have been the most rewarding experiences I have had as an educator thus far. Teaching is very much like parenting in that while you celebrate your own little wins in a Grant award or publication, nothing compares to a student or resident you are working with having these successes. If any one of the students I have worked with has a more successful or rewarding career than my own has been thus far, I will consider my "goal met.”