Elevate Your Mentorship: Role of Mentorship, Cognitive Load Theory, Feedback and Intellectual Bullying

Mentoring During the First Years of Practice

Recording Duration: 50 minutes
Interactive Course Duration: Approximately 75-90 minutes

Speaker Intro: Dr. Addie Reinhard is the Founder and CEO of MentorVet, an evidence-based mentorship and professional development program that promotes early career wellbeing. A veterinary wellbeing researcher, her research interests include developing and evaluating innovative interventions to support mental health and wellbeing within the veterinary profession. She was a collaborating researcher on the latest phase of the Merck Animal Health Veterinary Wellbeing Study. She is a 2015 graduate from UT College of Veterinary Medicine and holds a master's degree in Community and Leadership Development and a Graduate Certificate in College Teaching and Learning from the University of Kentucky.

Session Description: The transition to practice can be extremely stressful, and the Merck Animal Health Veterinary Wellbeing Study found that wellbeing is lowest among young veterinarians. Mentorship plays a vital role in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of veterinarians. Many veterinary mentors are skilled at passing on their medical knowledge but may struggle with supporting their mentee’s mental health and wellbeing. In this seminar, original focus group research will be discussed describing the experiences during the transition including challenges that early-career veterinarians face. Attendees will learn the attributes of a supportive mentor, recognizing and responding to warning signs, and implementable tools to promote wellbeing within your mentoring practices drawing from the implications of research among early-career veterinarians.

How Cognitive Load Theory Affects how we Practice Medicine

Recording Duration: 50 minutes
Interactive Course Duration: Approximately 75-90 minutes

Speaker Intro: Rose Nolen-Walston grew up on a farm in England with plans to become a professional dressage rider but a complete lack of talent for the sport led her to veterinary medicine, where she eventually graduated from UGA in 2001 with her DVM. She completed an internship and residency in large animal internal medicine at Tufts before joining the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. In 2014 Dr Nolen-Walston won University of Pennsylvania’s Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, and is past president of the Veterinary Comparative Respiratory Society. She is currently also pursuing a residency in clinical pathology at Tufts, and loving learning more about the small animal side of medicine too!

Session Description: It's incredibly hard being a veterinarian, and practicing clinical medicine is one of the most high pressure, high stakes environments out there. Even the most competent, confident veterinarian has days where it feels like nothing is coming together for them. But it turns out that there are functional limitations to how much the brain can do: we'll discuss cognitive load theory and the myth of multi-tasking, and why it feels like our brains fail us sometimes. Then we'll cover extrinsic and intrinsic cognitive load, and go over evidence-based strategies to allow your brain to work at full capacity. Even with that, though, everyone has days where imposter syndrome sneaks up on us (and some of us wish we had even the occasional day where it didn't!). We'll delve into why imposter syndrome occurs and how to address it, with a quick tour of the Dunning-Kruger effect. And finally, we'll discuss the second victim effect, which is the emotional trauma that healthcare providers experience when they make a medical error, and how these factors lead to burnout and compassion fatigue. These problems are endemic, and we'll finish with how to recognize them, why they occur, and most importantly, how we can find strategies to protect ourselves from them.

Pointers for Giving Feedback

Recording Duration: 50 minutes
Interactive Course Duration: Approximately 75-90 minutes

Speaker Intro: Laura Garrett is a clinical professor in oncology, the Khan Family Chair in Veterinary Clinical Oncology, and coordinator of communication training at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine. Topics of publication include lymphoma, mast cell tumors, cytology, and communication skills training.

Session Description: Giving and receiving feedback is an integral part of personal and professional growth, and yet it is generally viewed as a painful process which many prefer to avoid. This presentation will highlight techniques and a structured process that truly can make feedback a positive experience. Triggers which make receiving feedback more challenging will also be discussed. Ways to integrate feedback into clinical practice will be demonstrated with examples.

Intellectual Bullying in Specialty Medicine: Do We Have A Problem?

Recording Duration: 50 minutes
Interactive Course Duration: Approximately 75-90 minutes

Speaker Intro: Dr. Emily Gould and Dr. Kate Aicher are board certified internists and assistant professor of internal medicine in the Gastrointestinal Lab at Texas A&M University. Emily is passionate about the education and teaching of students, interns, and medical residents, and has an interest in mental health wellness in veterinary medicine. She is actively involved in the house officer Wellbeing Committee at A&M, whose mission is to promote support and systems based mental health initiatives for trainees.

Kate has participated in leadership and communication training throughout her career, and is a certified mediator.  These experiences led to an interest for organizational culture and helping others recognize everyday leadership opportunities and capacity to create meaningful change.

Session Description: No matter one’s role in specialty veterinary medicine, a lifelong commitment to excellent interpersonal communication, practice of evidence-based medicine, and acquisition of specialist level knowledge is required. Intellectual bullying is a form of emotional and psychological harassment that permeates both within and between individuals in industry, academia, and private practice. Perpetrators of intellectual bullying might use either real or perceived power, prestige, and/or tenure associated with their position to exert their influence over others (eg, within or outside their organizations, or with collaborating general practitioner veterinarians). Unexpectedly, some of these behaviors might come from a place of good intent, in which perpetrators perceive these behaviors as the most effective pathway to share knowledge, educate trainees, and elevate the standard of patient care. No single individual is immune to intellectual bullying, and attendees of this session will gain greater insight into this dynamic. The first half of this session will cover examples of intellectual bullying, ranging from mild to severe, as well as a discussion into evidence-based origins of why these behaviors develop in the first place. The impact of this problem and proposed solutions, as they relate to both private practice and academic specialty sectors, will be addressed in the latter half. After this session, attendees will feel comfortable identifying bullying behaviors in themselves and others and feel both called to action to address this system wide culture problem affecting our profession and empowered with strategies to do so effectively.