Dr. Darcy Wooten joins Sara to discuss the IDSA Medical Education Community of Practice ID Chalk Talk Project!

• The Teaching & Learning Resources Workgroup webpage can be accessed at  https://www.idsociety.org/mededcop
• Digital Education 2022: Building Skills, Community and the Future of Medical Education Conference information and registration available at https://cmecatalog.hms.harvard.edu/digital-education

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Hi, everyone.

Welcome to Febrile, a cultured podcast about all things infectious disease.

We use consult questions to dive into ID clinical reasoning, diagnostics, and antimicrobial management.

I'm Sara, your host and a Med-Peds ID fellow.

We are here with one of our bonus episodes, which we call Febrile Digest.

So these come in between our case based episodes and really it's just an open space for us to talk about different topics or questions, and oftentimes to share resources with everyone about how to teach and learn about ID.

Dr.

Darcy Wooten is joining us today and loyal listeners will probably remember that Darcy joined us way back in episode 13 to chat about approaching the care of a patient with a newly diagnosed HIV infection.

Darcy and I are part of the Medical Education Community of Practice within the IDSA, and there is a growing website that houses various resources for ID from the Teaching and Learning Resources Work group.

And so I'll link to that.

Running now through October 17th, there is a call for submissions for ID Chalk Talks.

So these are some open access teaching scripts with corresponding visuals for you to use to teach and learn about ID topics in the clinical setting and to a variety of learners.

So many people know and probably use the term chalk talks, but Darcy I'd love if you could give us a little bit of perspective on the ID Chalk Talk Project, and any other information you think would be useful for those who want to submit a chalk talk.

Yeah.

So the Teaching and Learning Resources Work group is looking to curate these mini teaching scripts that are made by ID educators, for ID educators, and really the key component of these is that they are very, very brief, uh, common bread and butter topics that you find yourself constantly teaching when you're on inpatient ward attending or when you're in the clinic.

Um, and so that, I'll just highlight that again, is that they're very, very brief common bread and butter topics.

Um, the submission format, as you'll see, when you go to the link, includes both a visual, which we recommend doing in Powerpoint as well as a Word document with a brief, um, script for what you envision the educator using your chalk talk to go through and talk about as they're, as they're teaching.

And so these are meant to be sort of mini lectures, mini topics that are meant to be used in the clinical setting to have high impact and be related to patients that you're seeing and really have one or two teaching points so that they hopefully stick.

And so the, the whole concept and idea of where this came from is that we're all so, so busy, um, on our inpatient services, doing our administrative and teaching and research, uh, responsibilities and activities that it becomes challenging to find a time to create really, really high yield teaching resources.

And we also wanna teach in a very, very concise way cuz we know our learners are also very busy.

And so this idea that the Teaching and Learning Resources group came up with was to really, um, have a repository of these teaching tools that people can borrow, modify, change, use verbatim, however is helpful to you, um, so that it takes one thing off your plate, but we're still able to really deliver high, high quality content, um, to our learners.

Yeah.

And I think that key part about bread and butter and the common things that we see on basically every service block is so important.

I went and pulled the list of the chalk tracks that actually are already available.

So if people listen to this and then want to go check them out.

They include complications of Staph aureus bacteremia, fungal markers, um, which is based off of a table that I made and have distributed with several of the Febrile episodes, immunizations for people living with HIV, infectious risks of asplenia, liver abscess, PJI management, and syphilis serology.

And so you can tell how high yield these topics are cause we've also covered a lot of those in, in previous episode.

So Darcy, do you have any suggestions on how to think about picking out what are, you know, good topics and are there other tips that people can think about when trying to create these chalk talks?

Yeah, I think, you know, always remember that you can teach these topics and, and come up with, um, ideas for what to create your chalk talk around for a variety of different learner, um, categories.

So it can be directed at the level of the medical student, internal medicine resident, pharmacy students and residents, and of course, ID fellows.

So sort of think about your audience, um, when you're thinking about these topics and again, just keeping it to things that you commonly teach about, maybe you're already giving these chalk talks and you can just modify it for the submission process.

It's very important from a sort of education theory, philosophy standpoint, uh, to come up with your learning objectives.

And here you wanna really focus in on just one or two learning objectives of what you want your learners to take away, um, from your teaching topic and, and trying to tie it to the clinical application and clinical management decisions that you're making for the patients that you're seeing currently.

Um, I will highlight a, a key tip that I tell everyone who's, who's working on these chalk talks and educators in general is that less is more, um, so really trying to target your timeframe to have something that can be delivered within five minutes or um, because that's really kind of the attention span on a busy inpatient service or in a busy clinic that your learners will have.

Um, and along those same lines of less as more, when you're thinking about making your graphics, you don't have to write out everything, um, and have word for word what you want people to take away from the talk, the chalk talk, it's really one or two key elements, maybe a table that sort of compares and contrasts to similar but distinct entities and diagnostics, let's say for example, um, that can be really effective.

And then I think the other aspect of the chalk talk that is really helpful to make it effective is to think about how you would recommend people engage learners when they're delivering your chalk talk.

Um, you can even write in your script questions that you would pose um, to the learners to reflect on, um, or make it interactive and have learners fill in different pieces, um, of the chalk talk.

Uh, if you're doing sort of complication, metastatic complications of staph aureus bacteremia, you could have your learners fill in on a little stick figure of where Staph likes to go, um, to really get them active and engaged.

So those are some tips I think will make, uh, the talk really effective, um, for other people to be able to use.

Great.

Well, you mentioned the complications of staph aureus bacteremia.

I was thinking maybe you can walk us through what will someone see if they go to the website and click on that chalk talk?

Yeah.

So there's two components for each chalk talk submission.

And then again, anyone coming to the website will be able to download each of the components and use for their teaching in the clinical setting.

So the two components are a PowerPoint presentation and a word document.

The PowerPoint presentation shows step by step, how the author of the chalk talk envisioned the chalk talk would unfold, um, as you draw different components on the board.

So for example, in the staph aureus bacteremia metastatic complications chalk talk, the way that the author, um, imagined that this would be delivered is that you would draw a little stick figure.

And then as a way to engage the learners, you could ask, well, where are some of the places that we know Staph aureus goes to, and you could even have learners come up to the board and, and draw to, to the vertebrae or to the heart or to a knee joint or, or what have you.

Um, and so step by step, the PowerPoint will sort of, um, show visually how the chalk talk would unfold.

And the key thing there too, when you're creating these is trying to really minimize how much time somebody using your chalk talk would need to spend drawing or writing on the board.

Right?

Because we really do want these to be interactive and engaging and having more of a discussion conversation with your learners and less time with the educator up at the board, writing out paragraph after paragraph, for example.

So the PowerPoint is the one component of the chalk talk submission.

The other component is the word document.

And this is you can think of as a teaching script of what the author envisioned.

Um, the educator would sort of talk through and teach about not necessarily word for word, uh, but a general idea.

Um, and so embedded within this would be not only the main teaching points about, uh, where, for example, Staph aureus likes to go when, um, a patient is bacteremic and the different complications that it can, it can cause, but also ways that you could engage your learners, um, as you go through the material.

Um, and so that might be posing a reflective question to the learners of, you know, how many patients have you seen with Staph aureus bacteremia?

How did those patients do or, uh, why is this, um, uh, infection in ID, so difficult to treat, thinking about another topic?

So, um, within that script, it's a script not only for the educator to sort of guide their teaching, but also ways to, um, pose questions and engage, um, the learners.

And so those are the two different components, um, that you could either use, um, as if you're using those track talks or that you would be submitting um, when you go to submit a track talk submission

yeah.

I feel like a lot of successful chalk talks have often focused on flow charts or tables in particular.

I, I do like to have it where you bring maybe an empty chart or diagram and fill it in together.

And, and that seems to work well.

Absolutely tables are always so good for comparing contrast, because that's an educational tool that can really help to, um, explain challenging concepts and things that, that get confused easily.

And so anything, any approach that uses a diagnostics schema or therapeutic schema is very, very effective.

Flow charts are great.

Um, if it's something where you need to be a brilliant artist in order to, uh, deliver, um, the chalk talk, that's probably, uh, less generalizable, right?

Especially for me where my people are basically stick figures when I try to draw them.

Um, so try and just do it, keep it simple.

Um, keep it short.

Less is more, those are really some key things.

So.

Really anybody could be able to, um, to utilize it.

I love it really, you know, that's kind of the sentiment behind a lot of the infographics that we do for the episodes.

I, I hope obviously that people will listen, but then really those are meant to be quick and easy to access on the fly.

And hopefully people can use them with that same approach of here's a framework that is ready for you if you're really busy, but you can also customize it and, and use it in your own teaching in a way that fits best for your learners.

That's a good, I'll just lead off on that point as well, is that, um, the chalk talks once they're published and able to be used using an open, um, common, uh, access license that you can modify the chalk talks in a way that works for you and works for your learners and we'll actually be soliciting feedback of, did you use this chalk talk?

How effective was it?

And did you modify it in any way that made it better?

And then we'll incorporate that, um, and give that feedback to the author so that they, they can even update their chalk talk presentations and submissions, um, to make them better.

So again, sort of this continuous, um, quality improvement that we apply to the, with an educational lens.

Yeah.

And you know, the other thing that we haven't necessarily said, but hopefully we can encourage is that I hope people know that this is a great opportunity for really anyone, any trainee, you don't have to specifically be an ID fellow or faculty member.

It really can be anyone who is interested in a specific ID topic, interacts with it a lot.

Um, this also can be something that you build as a team, maybe that is in your ID community, or some colleagues nearby.

You could collaborate with people at other institutions.

And then I think the important part that you've mentioned is that when the chalk talks are submitted, they get reviewed and you get feedback at that point as well as along the way.

And I think that's really helpful and important for us to continue to improve.

And oftentimes I think a lot of us, if you give teaching sort of on the fly, you don't often get feedback on, on things that you could adjust.

I, I love that suggestion and recommendation so hard.

That was awesome.

And I think, you know, I, I work with a lot of pulmonary critical care fellows, nephrology fellows.

And so I'm encouraging them to submit chalk talks with an ID lens about their area of expertise.

And I think that's gonna increase the incredible wealth, breadth and depth of the type of teaching resources that we have.

The other piece that I'll mention is that this is scholarship!

What we're doing here is really trying to sort of promote this academic clinician educator career path and, and track, um, allowing for people whose expertise is really teaching and education, the opportunity to disseminate their work.

Much of like what you've done with febrile, which has been so amazing, um, and has had such an impact, but really give people the opportunity to turn their teaching into scholarship that gets disseminated and we'll be able to track number of downloads, um, and be able to feed that back to authors and that can be used for academic promotion files.

So we're really, of course, Primarily, um, our primary objective here is to really create great teaching resources that anybody anywhere can use, but also to support career development and growth for people who are clinician educators, where it's not as, um, straightforward as that physician scientist or clinical investigator track of, of publishing papers in, uh, peer review journal articles.

In this case, uh, we'll be peer reviewing all the submissions.

And so you can put that down in your academic promotion file, that this was a peer reviewed process that got disseminated to people all over the country, all over the world.

And it's really having, um, a really high impact.

And I think that's really important to support our ID, um, community who, where their focus is on, uh, clinical education.

Yes.

Well, we're always trying to figure out how to make things count twice.

Of course.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Um, well, any other closing thoughts?

I think, uh, nothing, nothing, uh, insightful.

I'm just so excited to see what people put out there.

Um, I'm always, I'm always inspired by the creativity and sort of like, oh, I never thought of it that way or thinking about, you know, a, a different perspective.

And so I'm just, um, so excited.

Can't wait to see the final product and we'll have ongoing applications and calls for submissions.

So if you don't get to submit this time around, we'll have this in the future.

And we hope to build this up over, um, over time.

Yes, I'm so excited as well.

Uh, Darcy, well, thank you so much for spending some time with me again, and we really look forward to sharing when the new ones are posted on the.

Awesome.

Thanks so much for having me.

All right.

Well, please consider submitting to the ID chalk talk project.

Submissions are open through October 17th for this cycle.

I will put the link to the submission page and instructions in the episode notes.

And you can also follow the IDSA Medical Education Community Practice on Twitter @ iDSAMedEdCOP.

I also wanted to plug one additional item since we are on the topic of education and digital tools.

Building Skills, Community, and the Future of Medical Education.

This is a one day course it's gonna be held virtually, and it's really focused on providing practical experiences or workshops and talks that inspire medical educators of any training level to think about the creative ways we can teach and integrate digital education.

This is a fun conference, whether you are brand new, or a seasoned expert who wants to engage with others in the community.

The conference is sponsored by the Innovations in Media and Education Delivery or the iMED initiative at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center with course directors Shreya Trivedi from CoreIM and Adam Rodman from Bedside Rounds.

I will be there and talking about infographics and would really love to see as much ID representation as we can get.

This will be on October 7th, the links to this conference and all of the other items related to the chalk talks and the IDSA MedEd community practice will be available in the show notes as well as on the website febrilepodcast.com.

I really hope to see you all there.