Defying Gravity: New Perspective on Sustainability in Medical Education
Craig Noronha, MD, a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine and the Associate Chief for Education in the Section of General Internal Medicine, recently published a scholarly perspective as senior author that offers solutions for clinician educators and academic medical centers to maintain educational excellence amid constraints. The perspective, “Defying Gravity: Moving From a Scarcity Mindset Toward Sustainability,” published in Academic Medicine, describes how medical education “finds itself in a time of scarcity, in which the system has less than it needs.”
Academic medical centers are facing several challenges, including “heightened financial pressures, limitations on clinical access, and the ongoing need to integrate medical advances and emerging technologies into patient care.”
Dr. Noronha and co-authors argue that “clinician educators can adapt their mindset and focus on the decisions that are within their control, knowing that many of the challenges faced require system-level changes. Additionally, they can automate tasks, set boundaries for themselves, and stay in touch with the ‘why’ that drives their work.”
The perspective also outlines institutional initiatives to address the scarcity mindset and promote efficient use of existing resources. They argue that “greater interinstitutional collaboration in curricular development, broader teaching workforce development in both undergraduate and graduate medical education, and better use of educational specialists could improve efficiency and allow clinician educators to work to their full potential.”
The authors assert that “it is critical for educators to build strong relationships with institutional leaders and maximize their leadership potential to advocate for the importance of clinical education as a cornerstone of academic medicine worthy of resource investment.”