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>>SINGER: Hi, I’m Steve Singer, I’m the Director of Education and Outreach at the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education.
>>DALRYMPLE: Hi, I’m Billie Dalrymple Director of Continuing Medical Education at the Texas Medical Association in Austin, Texas.
>>SINGER: Welcome back, Billie. This is the second video in a series that we’re doing with you as a CME leader within a physician membership organization, specifically the Texas Medical Association, talking about sort of a number of ways in which you are working with others to bring value that, sort of it does two things at the same time. In one way it sort of helps to build your membership and build value for your physician membership and in another way promotes health and the improvement of care in Texas. We spent the first video talking about TMA’s involvement in quality. And now what I’d like to do in the second video is ask you to talk about the way in which you are addressing the needs of physicians as they try to navigate what is becoming a very complex environment for them. You know, there’s health care reform for them to both navigate as leaders within the state also, for them to navigate in terms of its implementation in their practices. So let’s, maybe start with that, and what are you, what are you doing in order to bring that value to physicians.
>>DALRYMPLE: OK. Well, one new initiative that we’ve had, and we’ve had two classes of graduates of this, is the TMA leadership college is what we call it. And we call them scholars, twenty physicians are invited, well, all physicians are invited to apply who are 40 years old or are within the first eight years of practice. These are the new to the profession. Are invited to participate in this college where they can learn about this environment that they’re going to be a part of and I guess another function of this is to provide them leadership training for their role in medicine and for them to be leaders in their local community and within TMA as well.
>>SINGER: So, so, as new physicians or as physicians who are young in their career one of the sort of educational need or a gap that you’re recognizing is that leadership, those leadership skills, may not be something they received right? In medical school
>>DALRYMPLE: Absolutely, they’ve spent their time in working on clinical knowledge and skills and they have not learned how to run a practice or to manage a practice if they need to. Or is they’re part of the larger group what is their role in the large group. We realize not all physicians these days are going to be in private practice. They maybe working in a large group or maybe even in a hospital
>>SINGER: Right, it’s more than likely that they will
>>DALRYMPLE: Yes, it is. And so, what services could they need to be leaders in the role that they choose to play? So, that’s what this leadership college is focusing on. I mean we have all sorts of interactive activities for them. We provide a mentoring program where we hook them up with someone who is maybe in the specialty they’re going to be in or similar type of practice they might work in; just for them to have an experienced mentor to work with and be with them for a number of years.
>>SINGER: Now, how long do they participate in this?
>>DALRYMPLE: It is a one year program.
>>SINGER: OK.
>>DALRYMPLE: They actually come together three times during that. And then they, they have assignments between the times that they meet. And the meetings the times that they meet are in conjunction with our leadership meetings like our fall leadership conference, our winter leadership conference and our annual meeting. They have the opportunity to meet and to work with other physicians.
>>SINGER: And this is part of your CME program?
>>DALRYMPLE: Yes it is. For almost all sessions we certify appropriate sessions for CME credits.
>>SINGER: OK
>>DALRYMPLE: For the ones that need it. And then, once they graduate we try very hard to integrate them into committees or councils within TMA or at the local county medical society or any other kind of other organization they might be interested in participating in, we would encourage that.
>>SINGER: that’s interesting, so you’re, so there’s two things that that I think are really neat about this. I just sort of want to stop and pause on. One is that, as you said in the previous video, this is another example where CME’s integration is simply another strategic sort of added value.
>>DALRYMPLE: Absolutely.
>>SINGER: OK. The second thing which I think is fascinating and a great idea for perhaps other viewers who are listening to sort of think about is that you’ve used the leadership sort of training not only as a way to address sort of practice based needs for physicians – and when I say practice it’s really global it’s not necessarily the practice of working in the clinic, or diagnosing patients, it’s being a leader, a manager, etcetera – but, you’re not only addressing those practice based needs but you’re also, it’s sort of a recruiting and training ground. So that you’re
>>DALRYMPLE: it is
>>SINGER: Right? You’re identifying leadership who can become involved as sort of the next generation of leadership for the medical society.
>>DALRYMPLE: And there’s two other things that I might point out
>>SINGER: sure
>>DALRYMPLE: that are characteristics of this program is that the program recognizes generational differences in physicians. I mean the ones that we have in training now are in new practice; they embrace technology more than others. So, we try to provide education that supports that for them. And we try to actually conduct the program using Facebook and Twitter and those kinds of things. I mean TMA has its own hashtag for every meeting we have. And we encourage, we ask them to be leaders in that for the rest of us.
>>SINGER: Right you sort of breaking the mold that the education and training doesn’t need to be sort of stuck in the past in terms of
>>DALRYMPLE: correct
>>SINGER: approach, format and right
>>DALRYMPLE: right. And then the other thing I was going to mention about this program is we assign them while they’re in this, the leadership college, and actually we’ve done this for a long time but it’s more pronounced now, is that they get assigned to a council or committee to be the representative to that, so that they can learn a lot from the various areas. We get one on our committee on CME.
>>SINGER: kind of an externship
>>DALRYMPLE: Yes. We get a medical student and a resident; if we can, if there are enough residents to go around, to be on our committee. And they are always very surprised about the depth of CME and what is involved in CME. So, I’ve always thought it was a great training for them.
>>SINGER: So, in addition to the physician leadership college we’ve been discussing, there’s also another approach that you’ve taken sort of in a broader context to help physicians to be healthy. Could you talk about that a little?
>>DALRYMPLE: Yes. TMA is lead by a committee on physician health and rehab that we’ve had for quite a number of years that provides resources for physicians to ensure that they personally remain healthy. I mean, there’s a course on stress management. There is a course and I would say that CME is involved in every aspect of what of the resources that they try to provide. Another example would be healthy relationships, family relationships. And then there are courses in educational opportunities for physicians to participate in that are, provide preventive tips for them not become burned, stressed out and burned out in their profession. Or there’s areas, I mean one of the topics that we talk about is drug and alcohol addiction, if that happens to be a temptation, how not to be
>>SINGER: impairment
>>DALRYMPLE: impairment in all sorts of ways. We have lots of prevention tools for those kinds of things and they’re very popular educational courses that we have at TMA that we’ve been doing for quite a while. And this committee also works with local level peer review committees to help with preventive measures in that way as well.
>>SINGER: OK. Billie, thank you for sharing so much information.
>>DALRYMPLE: Oh, well you’re welcome.
>>SINGER: Appreciate it.
>>DALRYMPLE: pleasure to be here.
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This is a transcript of Training Physician Leaders with New Approaches
http://www.accme.org/education-and-support/video/interview/training-physician-leaders-new-approaches
© 2013 Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education; all rights reserved. For noncommercial educational use only. For permission to reproduce and/or distribute for other purposes, please contact info@accme.org.
