Will I Learn to Lead?

Supervising as a Senior Resident

Supervising as a senior resident is a critical skill to honing leadership skills. In the third year, residents spend two months supervising a hospital medicine team of junior residents and medical students. Senior residents ensure high-quality care for patients while attending to the learning needs of those being supervised. One must balance making sure all the work gets done with making sure there is time for learning. Being an effective supervising resident requires not only clinical knowledge, but an awareness of interpersonal interactions, educational needs, and perhaps most importantly, self-awareness. Our overall curriculum gives trainees all of these skills, and the chance to practice them.

Leadership Seminars

Leadership skills are nurtured and developed during both the 5-month Psychosocial Medicine and Practice Improvement rotation (P2) in the PGY-2 year and the Practice Management seminar series in the PGY-3 year. Sessions are by leaders within our own department.

Team Meetings

Teams are more than a group of people working in the same space. What defines a team? Our HFM and Brown Square practice sites have biweekly multi-disciplinary team meetings. All of the faculty physicians, residents, nurse practitioners, nurses, medical assistants, and front desk secretaries have protected time for participation. We proactively brainstorm ways to further improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of the care we provide to patients. We also troubleshoot workflow issues affecting patient care when they do arise. Residents are fully integrated into team meetings, with the expectation that all residents rotate through the leadership role of some meetings. Residents learn how to address staff concerns, manage interpersonal conflict, create a sense of team, and plan out a "PDSA" cycle (Plan-Do-Study-Act, an Institute of Healthcare Improvement model for improving clinical performances). We firmly believe that your experience at team meetings will prepare you well for you future practice, and enable you to lead a team towards improved clinical care.