The First Time I Got Feedback on a Lecture

The year I was a surgical resident, I don’t think I got any feedback on my teaching skills, but I certainly worked on developing them. On my second night as an intern, we had a very sick lady who had shown up that afternoon in the ED with a perforated colon. As the intern overnight, I was taking care of her in the SICU, and, naturally, I was absolutely terrified.

Thankfully, I had a senior resident who taught me about the Surviving Sepsis guidelines and how to apply them in our scenario, and I internalized this information so much so that every single 3rd year medical student I worked with that year heard a chalk talk on sepsis.

When I switched to pediatrics, I was thrilled to broaden the scope of what I had learned. Early on in my intern year, a patient suffered severe consequences of Maple Syrup Urine Disease, and, again, I felt completely lost. Luckily, our genetics and metabolism team was ready to teach us about warning signs for their patients, and this was another talk that I have developed over the years, my style taken from Debra Regier’s talk.

In my second year of residency, I spent a month-long rotation at Holy Cross Hospital, which was our community experience. The second-years took turns being the floor resident taking care of patients and the teaching resident. I was so nervous when I gave this talk, knowing there would be an evaluation at the end.

I can still remember the elation I felt upon going over this evaluation with my attending, but also some of the discomfort. I tended then (and still tend) to ask questions rather than just giving up the answer, but there is a point where that can be unhelpful, and the learner finds themself floundering looking for an answer. There is a wide world of difference between the Socratic method and what is referred to as “pimping,” and much of that lies in whether you (as the teacher) are seen as supportive or not.

I am still working on asking less “what am I thinking?” questions. I believe I ask less of them now than I used to, but it can still be a tempting option when I feel like time is limited during clinical care of patients.