Last week, a school-wide internal communication announced recent changes impacting Health Sciences, in an e-blast entitled, “GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences Combines Efforts to Bolster Student Support and Evaluation.” These changes include exciting developments designed to increase interprofessional collaboration across SMHS and help move us closer to our vision to drive innovation and quality in health and healthcare delivery through education, scholarship, and service. Now, we ask, “What does this all mean for faculty, staff, and students in Health Sciences?”I have posed questions to some of the leaders in these areas, so they can provide more details, offer insights, and describe next steps for all of us in Health Sciences.
THE WHAT, WHY, & HOW
RHONDA:
Q: The announcement stated that a new consolidated Office of Student Support will provide assistance to all SMHS students. How will this new office strengthen and enrich current services for HS students?
A: First of all, I want to say that I am looking forward to working collaboratively with all of you, getting to know more about the Health Sciences programs, and exploring opportunities that will enrich our community. I believe both the MD and Health Sciences programs have significant strengths. Our goal is to combine those services and opportunities, and create new ones, with a commitment to build an office that will provide exceptional academic and personal support services for all students in a healthy and inclusive learning environment. Our team is still in the initial phase of planning, deciding on short- and long-term objectives. We are discussing various strategies to create a culture that embodies our vision. Some specific plans include conducting a needs survey, offering professional development for faculty and staff related to student life and support, promoting activities to enrich the interprofessional student community, creating a student advisory council, and blending MD and HS student interest and wellness groups. Measuring our success and student-oriented research are also key parts of our mission. Stay tuned for more details and plans – and of course, suggestions and feedback are always welcomed and appreciated.
Q: Who are the members of the new team?
A: We are thrilled to have such a terrific team. Besides myself, our team consists of Lorenzo Norris, Patrick Corr, and Nick Atlas. Aubrey Silverman will provide administrative support. This core team is expanded through supplemental instructors, writing tutors, and others.
PATRICK:
Q: How do HS students or faculty reach out for support or guidance from the SMHS Office of Student Support (OSS), or give feedback about support services?
A: HS Students, faculty, and staff can contact OSS by emailing SMHSStudents@gwu.edu. Any emails previously sent to the Office of Student Life and Academic Support have been forwarded to the new organizational email account. As a note, the current referral process will remain in place for HS students for the near future. The SMHS OSS will reach out with additional information in the coming weeks.
Feedback on support services, questions, or concerns will be sought in the near future but these are always welcomed at the email address noted above. Additional formal opportunities for updates and discussions will be provided in the coming weeks through communication from the SMHS OSS.
Q: With the COVID-19 pandemic still upon us, is there any special guidance for students who need support for their social, emotional, or academic well-being?
A: HS students in need of social or academic support can complete a brief referral form or email SMHS OSS directly at SMHSStudents@gwu.edu. Our office’s team of advisors can provide support for students with a wide array of needs or ensure referral to other offices within the university, as appropriate.
For emotional well-being, SMHS OSS is going to introduce TalkSpace, a telehealth mental health counseling tool, in the coming weeks. Prior to implementation of this new resource, HS students can contact OSS by emailing SMHSStudents@gwu.edu. Our office can provide referrals or assist in providing care for individuals in need through various resources, including Colonial Health. TalkSpace is not designed to take the place of Colonial Health, rather expand the scope of services and provide immediate access for students, no matter where they are or what time of day it is.
LORENZO:
Q: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt nearly every aspect of life for so many, including our students and their families. What advice do you have right now for faculty and staff who encounter HS students experiencing anxiousness, depressed mood, or other concerning symptoms during this difficult time?
A: At this time, faculty and staff should adopt a supporting listening framework and not seek to give premature advice or judge a student's distress. Faculty and staff should be particularly vigilant for signs of significant disruptions in students’ academic (failing grades) or professional performance (tardiness, disruptive class attitude). Students in academic or professional distress should be encouraged to seek a consultation with the SMHS OSS. Students that express suicidal thoughts, increased substance use, or other self-injurious behaviors, should immediately be referred to Colonial Health, and Rhonda and myself should also be notified right away.
Q: The stress from COVID-19 and changes with school re-openings are also impacting our faculty and staff. Do you have any tips to share about self-care, or signs that suggest asking for help is warranted?
A: Faculty and staff should remain vigilant for signs of burnout. Burnout has three key dimensions: emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and feeling ineffective. So, when a faculty or staff member starts to feel exhausted, feels less reward, and questions why they are in their profession, these are strong indicators of burnout. Other signs that you should seek help include, but are not limited to:
- Depressed mood for two weeks or more
- Increased substance use
- Disengagement from family and friends
- Thoughts of suicide
There are a number of things faculty and staff can do to promote self-care, and prevent burnout. The following list is not inclusive, but provides a practical starting point for burnout prevention:
- Engage in regular exercise
- Optimize sleep
- Engage in recreation and activities
- Eat a balanced diet; avoid fast food
- Limit use of alcohol
- Practice mindful meditation
- Discuss challenges in the work environment with colleagues and supervisors
Q: We just learned that the Office of Student Support will provide a new service to HS students soon called TalkSpace, which provides 24/7 virtual access to licensed counseling and mental health services. What are your thoughts about the role of virtual counseling services paired with primary care and/or psychiatric care for health professions students?
A: TalkSpace has all the potential of being a superb addition to the services already offered through Colonial Health, and existing SMHS wellness programs. The SMHS OSS will monitor the utilization and effectiveness of TalkSpace throughout the academic year and share updates on its effectiveness. The counseling sessions are kept confidential, but we will learn more about utilization and invite students to share feedback about their experiences with TalkSpace counseling.
CATHERINE:
Q: In the announcement last week, the AskIQ team which you lead was mentioned along with the Integrating Quality (IQ) Initiative. Many may recall the IQ initiative was started back in 2017 through collaboration between HS faculty and administration. Can you tell us a bit more about the current state of the IQ Initiative, and what’s on the horizon for the AskIQ team?
A: IQ drives division-wide quality projects within Health Sciences; each year we experiment bringing new services by partnering with departments and programs to identify emerging needs within the organization. In July, we kicked-off Academic Support and Evaluation for New Degrees (ASEND) to provide systematic monitoring and support for new academic programs during their start-up phase (i.e. Year 0 through Year 5) through more structured collaborations, data, and feedback loops between the senior associate dean’s office, department, and program. Building on the current IQ Database, we are adding Key Performance Indicator (KPI) dashboards for each degree program rolling out in September.
Q: It was also announced that your AskIQ team will provide incremental support to the MD program. Can you elaborate on that, and share any thoughts about how this could create opportunities for more collaboration between HS and undergraduate medical education (UME) faculty or staff?
A: Yes, we are excited about this partnership. In helping support the MD program, there is a tremendous opportunity to work more closely together, break down some of our silos, and learn from each other. AskIQ will provide data analyst support, and also consulting to see where we might be able build school-wide resources. The IQ Databases have significant educational scholarship potential, which would be an excellent opportunity for collaboration.
Q: Under President LeBlanc’s leadership, the university continues to build new data systems for evaluation and quality assurance. What does this mean for HS programs, and how is the AskIQ team keeping our faculty empowered with tools and data for continuous improvement?
A: This is all part of the AskIQ mission! Health Sciences is well prepared for this environment due to the multi-year build by the AskIQ team of the IQ Database and Tableau dashboards designed to address the unique measures and needs of our academic programs. We now have 16 dashboards specific to HS programs that are certified by GW Business Intelligence (BI), which meet the same rigorous quality standards as the University-produced dashboards. This summer included some major shifts in university reporting tools with the phase-out of Cognos, the introduction of Thoughtspot, and increases to available Tableau dashboards. AskIQ is designing role-specific resources, and delivering basic and advanced training to help us transition.
TONY:
Q: Congratulations on your recent appointment as interim associate dean. You are taking on a brand new, school-wide leadership role in SMHS related to evaluation and educational research. Would you tell us more about this role, your goals, and vision for the work?
A: In this new role, I have three primary goals related to educational research and scholarship. First, I’d like to help advance and increase the visibility of health professions education (HPE) research at SMHS through strategic planning and collaborative research across medicine, HS, and the MFA. Second, I want to build educational research capacity to support the development and delivery of evidence-informed educational practice in the medical and HS programs. This goal will require substantial partnership with many faculty and staff. One way to achieve this goal is to engage clinician-educators as contributors on educational research projects and help to mentor students and early/mid-career faculty on research and scholarly innovation projects. And finally, I’d like to help SMHS and the MFA grow our influence on HPE research and practice nationally and internationally through leadership and scholarly service on decision-making committees, editorial boards, and other interdisciplinary, interprofessional groups. The nice part about all of these goals is that much of this work has already been started at GW by groups like the Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE), the IMPACT team, and various faculty in medicine and HS. So, my plan isn’t to reinvent the wheel here; rather, I’d like to partner with others to build even more momentum. My prior work helped me build a global network of collaborators in HPE research, and I am eager to make connections for our teams here at GW.
Q: How will your role interface with Trudy Mallinson, associate dean for research in Health Sciences?
Trudy and I will work closely together to grow educational, clinical, translational, and health services research in HS. Our early discussions have covered several areas: the HS Research Portal, the HS Research Advisory Committee (HSRAC), the committee's work on strategic planning and identifying priorities for cross-disciplinary research collaborations, and the initiation of research learning opportunities. Under Trudy's leadership, the HSRAC is building the kind of infrastructure we need to support early career investigators, encourage cross-disciplinary science, and create tools to make research and grants administration more efficient. My primary focus, on the other hand, is convening teams of education scholars, conducting my own programs of educational research (and inviting others to join those efforts), and reaching across SMHS and the MFA to build research capacity for longitudinal projects and educational innovations. Although extramural money for research in HPE is limited, Trudy and I are exploring our ability to capture extramural funds for HPE.
Q: As mentioned, the AskIQ team will begin offering new services to the MD program. Will you explain your new role in medical education evaluation and how you will collaborate with HS and the AskIQ team?
A: The MD Office of Evaluation and the AskIQ team both have outstanding track records of high-quality program evaluation and quality improvement. By working together more closely, AskIQ will support part of the immediate personnel needs in the MD Office of Evaluation by helping with some of our routine analysis, reporting, and infographic creation. Following some consolidation and process efficiency work, we plan to partner with AskIQ to develop a relational database (similar to work already done for HS programs) that will help the MD program streamline its reporting and provide dashboards to support program accreditation and curriculum evaluation. This move is also intended to facilitate greater integration between MD and HS programs, including collaboration on how program evaluation processes and data can be used to support educational research and scholarship.
Q: Dean Bass has spoken many times about the importance of interdisciplinary teamwork, whether it be in the classroom, care delivery settings, a research lab, or the community. With this is mind, how will you advance her vision for greater teamwork related to educational research and innovation?
A: I couldn’t agree more with Dean Bass’s comments on the importance of teamwork. Any success I may have had in HPE research and scholarship has been the result of team science. So, my plan right out of the gate is to convene a group of faculty and administrative leaders across medicine, HS, and the MFA who have an interest in educational research. Together, we will brainstorm research ideas, review data that has already been collected, look prospectively at data that needs to be collected, discuss evaluation systems that can be built to leverage longitudinal data, and then work collaboratively to study our own system and disseminate the top-notch scholarship and innovation that’s being done across SMHS and the MFA. We also have some forthcoming news about a couple new scholarly projects involving early career faculty in HS paired with highly experienced mentors. Stay tuned for more details about that soon!
Q: For many of our faculty, especially those who devote a large percentage of their time to teaching, getting started with scholarly projects or research can be daunting (at times, overwhelming). Do you have any proven strategies or tips to share for faculty new to educational research or scholarly projects?
A: The best way I’ve found to bolster one’s scholarly productivity is to find like-minded faculty and team-up to build a community of education scholars. If you look in the literature, you’ll find that most HPE faculty report three primary barriers to research and writing: they lack (1) time, (2) money, and (3) expertise. However, collaboration and applying principles of team science can help solve all three of these problems: (1) projects can be divided up and conquered, thereby making them much less overwhelming or time-consuming [time], (2) education research is often a relatively low-cost endeavor, and others on the team may have start-up funds to help kickstart ideas and collect pilot data for use in obtaining extramural funding [money], and (3) team members share expertise and provide one another with built-in mentorship and peer review [expertise]. Ultimately, if we do nothing else, we need to build high-functioning teams of education scholars with strong leadership if we want to have a positive impact on HPE research and practice at GW and around the world.
Q: HS has made enormous strides in building capacity for quality improvement and data-driven decision-making in our academic programs over the past three years. How can we leverage these advancements and take our educational research and scholarship to the next level?
A: The data are all there, and in HS the data seem to be quite well organized and stored (and we’ll work to do the same in the MD program). What needs to be done now, I believe, is to sit down, review those data through the lens of what the field already knows (and doesn’t know), and then think creatively about how our processes can be shared more broadly. Although I’m still learning, I’m fairly certain there is a ton of innovation happening inside SMHS when it comes to quality improvement and data-driven decision-making. We just need to work together to figure out the story line, write a compelling narrative, and disseminate those innovations.
AMY:
Q: Congratulations on your recent appointment as assistant dean. The COVID-19 pandemic is creating tremendous uncertainty for colleges and universities. Thus far, HS has maintained very stable enrollment throughout our undergraduate and graduate programs. What strategies and tactics are helping support enrollment?
A: Emphasizing our mission and vision, and the impact on the current pandemic, really speaks to our prospective students. Usually these are people that are entering health care because they want to make a difference and our emphasis on health care quality and delivery through innovative use of education, scholarship, and service really speaks to their core values. In more practical terms, many prospective students see great professional opportunities in health care and our long history of quality online education allows us to be ahead of many other institutions when dealing with the constantly changing environment in education we are experiencing due to COVID-19. In our residential programs, the word is getting out that the faculty and staff really care about the students. There is no better marketing strategy than taking great care of your current students, so your alumni become reliable recruiters.
Q: In HS, the way we spread the word about our programs and recruit students takes many different approaches in on-campus versus blended and online programs. What enrollment trends, concerns, and opportunities are on your radar right now?
A: There are several interesting trends across disciplines and delivery methods we are seeing right now. I continue to see concern regarding the cost of education, and we are waiting to see if the downturn in the economy brought about by COVID-19 will result in increased enrollments, a trend we have seen in the past. I see a trend toward competency-based education continuing, as well as further interest in guided pathways, such as the pathways provided by our Guaranteed Admission Agreements. And, of course, online education continues to grow in importance with the current crisis. As far as opportunities, I see opportunities for HS in all of these areas and continue to maximize those opportunities while staying true to health sciences core values. In the past, online program management (OPM) arrangements have been important for many institutions, including GW. Many universities are weighing the need to take on some aspects of marketing and recruitment themselves, and GW is no exception. No one way of communicating with prospective applicants is ever going to be sufficient, especially when a strong value is placed on diversity as it is in Health Sciences. HS is actively examining our current recruitment and strategic enrollment practices in collaboration with our recruitment partners and the university.
Q: How can HS continue to make progress in strategic enrollment?
A: Continuing to emphasize our commitment to innovative education and health care, serving diverse students and populations, and interprofessional collaboration will continue to drive our strategic enrollments and help us fulfill our mission and build toward our vision of transforming health care locally, nationally, and globally. Lowering the cost of education through accelerated and guided pathways, scholarships, and extramurally funded pipeline programs are also key strategies that we’re focused on. I have really been excited to see the Governor’s Health Sciences Academy take off, and it’s a testament to the importance of public-private partnerships to shape deep pipelines for our health professions programs.
REAMER:
Let me share my appreciation to all those who weighed in today with details about the recent organizational changes. We are so fortunate to benefit from their leadership, and I am encouraged by their dedication to SMHS faculty, staff, and students. When we began to develop the Health Sciences Strategic Plan, we started off by defining our core values. Those values -- innovation, collaboration, diversity & inclusion -- are clearly evident in the all work shared with us today. While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on nearly every aspect of life for all of us and our students, I am confident that our best strategy to come out of this crisis healthy and strong in HS is to live true to our values as we make decisions, adapt, and evolve. On a final note, let me encourage HS faculty and staff to pass along your ideas with the leaders we heard from today. They will need your input and support to accomplish these goals. Let me echo the helpful advice shared by Dr. Norris: please remain vigilant for signs of burnout and consider adopting some of the self-care and preventive behaviors offered. I have some work to do myself on a few of them, and I hope you’ll join me in that work and share them with colleagues and students. Thank you for all that you are doing, during this difficult time, to ensure the success of HS across education, scholarship, and service. And, most especially, thank you for offering your peers and students alike compassion, patience, and understanding.
