Wendy Stead, MD, Program Director, Infectious Diseases Fellowship, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
In addition to serving as the proud Program Director for our BIDMC Infectious Diseases Fellowship, I am the Blumgart Firm Chief for our BIDMC Internal Medicine Residency Program, a role that allows me to teach and mentor many of our medicine residents. My research interests in medical education include interdisciplinary projects that bring together providers from different specialties to build consensus about controversial topics. More recently in my career, with a group of amazing collaborators and the support of IDSA, I have been studying gender bias in academic advancement. I also love narrative medicine, writing essays about my inspiring patients, and also helping to guide other providers interested in sharing their stories.
I was fortunate to do my internal medicine residency and ID fellowship training at a place that valued medical education; and I'm not just talking about valuing good teachers, but actually understanding that being an effective educator is something that can be trained, developed and treasured. As a trainee and junior faculty member at BIDMC, I saw many models of medical education leaders building academic careers at Harvard as clinical educators and they inspired me to want to do the same.
When you are fortunate enough to hold leadership roles in fellowship and residency programs, integrating your training in medical education is naturally part of the job as you develop and improve upon curricula, provide trainee feedback and evaluation and strive to continually improve your programs. I also completed a Rabkin Fellowship in Medical Education as a junior faculty member at BIDMC and learned about conducting rigorous medical education research so that I could be productive in med ed scholarship, which is the currency of promotion at HMS.
I LOVE DOING THIS! As ID doctors, we have the privilege, but also the challenge, of working with almost every other specialty in the hospital; and sometimes, these interactions can be smooth and easy when we all agree. But other times, when the stakes are high, and we have vastly different literature, viewpoints, and silos within which we have trained, interspecialty interactions can lead to conflict. Think of the times you've argued with the cardiology team about TEE vs. TTE for diagnosis of endocarditis. Or the debates with orthopaedics about prosthetic joint infections--can the joint stay in or does it need to come out? Much of my work has focused on identifying situations where these conflicts arise predictably and bringing these specialties together to learn with and from each other in the hopes of building consensus around controversial topics. Several of these projects have resulted, not only in publications but in long-standing multidisciplinary conferences or teams that continue to this day to provide care at BIDMC.
I enjoy writing stories about my inspiring patients and have been fortunate to have some essays published through the years. I do this mostly because writing wraps me more tightly into the global community of healthcare workers when people reach out to share their thoughts about these pieces, and this has been deeply renewing and good for my soul, especially during the traumatic times we've experienced during the pandemic. I love supporting trainees who are interested in narrative medicine and have co-directed our BIDMC Medicine Residency writing group in the past as well as mentoring individual resident writers. I have also been an editor for the Healing Arts section of the Journal of General Internal Medicine since 2021, so I get to review narrative submissions in this role and give feedback to other healthcare worker writers.
BEST FELLOWS EVER! Enough said 😁 Seriously though; I love these people. They simply blow me away with their aspirational care for our patients, their selfless support for each other, and their curious and brilliant minds. They are the best part of my job.
I sort of fell into this project after "mentoring" a senior resident talk by one of the residents on my firm at BIDMC, Jen Manne-Goehler (I put "mentoring" in quotes because Jen is a phenom who needed zero mentoring and who is now an incredibly accomplished ID faculty member at Brigham and Women's Hospital!). She gave a talk on the delayed academic advancement of women in medicine generally, and we decided to look into what was happing in ID in more detail. That eventually led us to a project supported by IDSA during IDWeek 2019, in which we conducted a survey and several focus groups documenting ongoing gender disparities specifically in ID, and identifying many barriers to the academic advancement of women in our specialty. This work resulted in a publication in the Inclusion, Diversity, Access and Equity Supplement in JID in 2020 outlining policy changes that should be undertaken by leaders of ID divisions, medicine departments, and IDSA to address gender advancement disparities. It's been such an honor to partner with colleagues from across the country on this topic and work to rectify some pretty shocking continued disparities. And stay tuned because we hope to have more to share on this topic very soon!
I think there has been a lot more support for ID trainees interested in building careers in medical education over the last decade, along with a recognition that we need to value people who have this skill set, so first of all, believe you can do it! Next, I would say, try to get some structured and specific training in med ed as early as you can in your career -- training that includes how to be an effective teacher but also how to conduct medical education research (especially if you're hoping for a career at an academic medical center) and how to hold leadership roles in med ed. When you are in training and/or looking for that first job, find models of clinician educators wherever you are (maybe they will be in your ID division, maybe they will be in the Medicine Residency or somewhere else) and talk to them a lot about how they build their career(s)! Get involved and network with any organized group of educators, either locally or nationally (like the IDSA Med Ed COP!), so you get support and ideas from peers who share your interests. And never hesitate to let your division and department leaders know you want to build a career in med ed, so they will think of you for future leadership roles (conference leader, clerkship leader, associate program director, etc.) as they arise.
I would say that right now, I'm very excited about the future of digital medical education--not because I have any skill at it. (I generally fear technology--I can actually remember having conversations with my husband where we said that cell phones were ridiculous and they would "never catch on". Not sure if you want to share this on my profile, but I think it shows we are not exactly early adopters:) But I am lucky to work with many colleagues right now who are innovators and future leaders in this field (especially Sara Dong, the creator of the Febrile podcast (https://febrilepodcast.com/) who is currently finishing up fellowship in our combined BIDMC-BCH Med Peds ID Fellowship). I get excited every time I talk to her and every time I watch her podcast or use one of her ID infographics. And I know there are many other talented educators working in this space. I think they are artists and the future of our field!