The pilot was launched in spring 2021 with five residents. “We organized lectures and workshops for them with faculty from the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Stanford School of Medicine,” Hosamani explains. To date, the Medical Education elective has been offered five times for 25 residents.

Two Course Directors Added

Having established the program and seen it through its pilot phase, Hosamani passed its implementation on to two junior faculty members who are as passionate about educating educators as she is: Julia Armendariz, MD, affiliated clinical assistant professor of hospital medicine, and Sharmin Shekarchian, MD, affiliated clinical assistant professor of hospital medicine.

“Sharmin and I have an absolute blast doing this. We love it with all our hearts, and we’ve both grown a lot through this experience,” comments Armendariz. “Medicine is hard, and being a physician is not easy. A person could get lost doing all the things it takes to learn how to be a good doctor. This elective enables learners to take the time to think about how they can be better educators, and to enrich their career path with joy.”

Shekarchian adds, “For me, the highlight of the rotation is the four hours observing and listening to all the residents present their talks. We celebrate their achievements, and we always learn from the residents through their presentations.”

Tools of the Trade

The rotation includes daily lectures on topics such as how to present a chalk talk (using a whiteboard and markers), how to set expectations with learners, principles of adult learning, how to give feedback, how to design teaching objectives, and many others.

“One of the best parts of the rotation is observing the residents presenting their own work,” Hosamani says. “I remember vividly one resident who used a football as part of his chalk talk to demonstrate teaching how to place the probes for a bedside cardiac ultrasound. He held the football over his heart as he walked through the process, moving the probes into their appropriate places on the football.”

Much of the learning occurs in small-group interactions among the residents as they apply learning concepts to the clinical setting.

Muhammad Fazal, MD, was a third-year resident when he enrolled in the Medical Education elective; he is now a fellow in cardiology at Stanford. “The whole process was very rewarding,” he recalls. “It made me realize how hard it is to give an effective chalk talk that is short enough to maintain interest yet long enough to present the information.” He regrets not having taken the elective sooner in his training and hopes to see it as a requirement at some point.

Fazal also appreciated the emphasis on the “softer science” of medicine: how to communicate and listen. “These are skills you don’t learn in a textbook,” he notes. “It made me realize that often just being there to listen and be supportive is what the patient needs.”

The Sky’s the Limit

“It’s a great honor to have Dr. Hosamani endow us with the opportunity to further develop this program,” Armendariz states. “She is a great mentor and will continue to advise us on how to get things done.”

Looking ahead, Armendariz, Hosamani, and Shekarchian all envision adding topics to the curriculum, adapting the elective for other medical subspecialties, inviting more faculty members to participate, incorporating technology into some of the teaching modalities, and presenting their work at medical conferences to enable others to create their own programs.

“The sky’s the limit,” Hosamani declares. “Our only constraint is the availability of resources to expand and further enrich this elective.”

Skills Development and a Truly Collaborative Environment

Before coming to Stanford in March 2021, Tiffany Woo Sung, an administrative associate in the Division of Hospital Medicine, worked for six years as a preschool teacher in Mountain View. “I loved being around and working with children,” says Sung. “I loved the classroom environment.”

Eventually, however, Sung started feeling the need to apply her skills in a different field. “I have always believed that in order for me to be successful professionally, I need to continue to feel challenged in what I am doing,” she says. “I had gotten to the point where I felt like I wasn’t getting enough opportunities to build upon the existing skills that I had.”

Like others experiencing the pandemic, Sung started to reflect on what she wanted for her professional life and began seeking other opportunities. “I thought, OK, what better time than now to make a change?

“When I came to Stanford, it felt like starting with a blank slate,” Sung recalls. “I didn’t know what to expect other than what I read in the job description.

It’s great that my team is full of wonderful individuals who are so patient, open, and willing to support me during my transition into the new role.”

Sung truly values the people she works with. After accepting her role at Stanford, she was greeted warmly by her manager and team. She became engrossed in her role, enjoying the chance to work alongside other professionals and collaborators. “I didn’t expect everyone to encourage collaboration so highly,” says Sung. “At a lot of places I’ve either worked at or heard of, if you’re successful, you want everyone to know it was your success so that you can stand out from the rest of the employees. But here at Stanford, everyone wants to share credit for successes.”

Elsie J. Wang, division manager of hospital medicine, offered Sung resources to encourage personal growth by pointing out the numerous classes that Stanford offers to its staff, furthering their education and providing them with leadership opportunities. Sung also appreciates the opportunity to network at Stanford. “All these benefits have been refreshing and encouraging,” Sung says. “It shows me that the people around me want to invest in my future.”

questions, and she knows they’ll give her the help she needs to be successful. She claims with confidence, “With the right tools, I’m able to succeed.”

When Ali’s manager, Erica Dapelo-Garcia, primary care and population health (PCPH) division manager, took maternity leave, Ali received support from another division manager, and she was always able to reach someone for support. This made her adjustment into her current role much simpler. As Ali says, “The support I got made for smooth sailing.”

quickly into her new job. She enjoys the challenges of her new position, saying, “Here, I can progress with my career and I don’t feel any limits.”

Recently, PCPH division manager Erica Dapelo-Garcia asked Zuniga-Lumidao about her goals, and she realized that she now has a whole new set of opportunities for career advancement. “That’s been really exciting,” she says. “I don’t necessarily know exactly what the next step in my career will be, but I know what’s available to me, and I think that’s important.”

Well, Bhuvana, having grown up in India, what are a few things that stand out from your move to the United States?

My schooling, college, master’s work, and professional education was in Chennai, and then I moved to Mumbai to work for Industrial Development Bank of India for three years before coming to the U.S. for my MBA at the University of Oklahoma (OU). But the MBA was incidental. It was just an excuse to travel around and see Niagara Falls and the Golden Gate Bridge. I love traveling, and geography is one of my favorite subjects.

What were some of the challenges you faced after your move?

The main adjustment was in living so far away from my family at a time when it was not so easy to be connected through WhatsApp and other social media. Doing team projects for the MBA was also a challenge, as my fellow MBA candidates ranged from fresh undergraduates to people like me who had industry experience and then had to go back to being a full-time student. We had several international students, and learning different cultures was an amazing experience. Then there were things like trying to understand American football, which was a big part of the culture at OU.

What do you see as the greatest challenges in your job?

The most difficult part of being a division manager is time management. I’m constantly being pulled in multiple directions. For example, there are items that are required by the department, initiatives that I am working on with my chief, faculty and research needs, and then there are the day-to-day operational matters that come with running the division. Fitting all that into my workday and maintaining work-life balance is a real challenge. That is where the community and networking really come in handy — so we can get things done faster and in an efficient manner rather than reinventing the wheel every time.

ethnicity, and socioeconomic status are critical in determining a myelodysplastic patient’s overall clinical outcome.

At the end of the 2022 event, the faculty judges picked seven winners to receive $500 for their exceptional research. Winners were Baum; Molina; Sharif Vakili, MD; Max McClure, MD; Ankita Devareddy, MD; Christian O’Donnell, MD; and Matthew Alkaitis, MD, PhD. They were mentored by Andre Kumar, MD; Peter Greenberg, MD; Kevin Schulman, MD; Desiree LaBeaud, MD; Matthew Wheeler, MD, PhD; Angela Rogers, MD; and Tian Zhan, MD, PhD, and David Kurtz, MD, PhD, respectively.

As part of the program, residents are also assigned to faculty mentors, who help them throughout their research process. To acknowledge the mentors’ valuable work, an award was created for a “faculty member who has consistently gone above and beyond in providing support and mentorship for residents pursuing research.” In 2022, judges presented the Internal Medicine Residency Research Award for Outstanding Mentorship to Fatima Rodriguez, MD, an assistant professor in cardiovascular medicine.

Testa has been involved in research on sarcomas since he was an intern, and over the years he has helped publish six research papers, with two more in the works. This year, he applied for a hematology/oncology fellowship at Stanford. His long-term goal is to develop a career in academic medicine as a physician-scientist with a special focus on immuno-oncology.

Testa sees the symposium, mentorship, and month of dedicated research as providing vital career and research opportunities to a growing number of internal medicine residents.

“Publishing data is important, and presenting data at symposiums like this one is a great start,” he says. “It’s a starting point for something bigger, like a national conference meeting or a peer-reviewed publication.”

Wen-Kai Weng

Nature Photography