Education & Training
Exemplary medical education starts with better teachers
H. Barrett Fromme, MD, MHPE, on her rounds
“It’s said that University of Chicago faculty are the teachers of teachers; we pride ourselves on being exceptional teachers,” said H. Barrett Fromme, MD, MHPE. All faculty members teach, but rarely do they develop exemplary teaching skills on their own. “Having the best curriculum in the world doesn’t matter if it’s delivered poorly by people who are uninterested, who don’t have active learning strategies or who are not learner-centered in their teaching,” said Fromme, Associate Dean for Faculty Development in Medical Education and Section Chief of Pediatric Hospital Medicine.
Fromme is an expert in helping medical teachers develop the skills to become great educators, which, in turn, improves how medical education is delivered. Faculty and clinical associates at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine are offered the opportunity to attend training on topics such as how to give a captivating lecture, how to be an effective clinical coach, how to give positive feedback to trainees and how to mentor. In addition, individuals can request a confidential teaching consult from a member of the Academy of Distinguished Medical Educators. “Members of the academy include faculty who have been recognized for their exceptional teaching skills and are trained to observe and coach clinical and pre-clinical teachers who want to improve their teaching skills,” said Fromme. The Pritzker School of Medicine has one of the country’s longest-standing programs of peer observation and coaching and of developing faculty as teachers.
Training physicians to be superb teachers is emphasized at every level of medical education. Residents and fellows have their own dedicated programs to help develop their teaching skills, as a mandatory part of the curriculum. And even medical students can take electives to prepare them for the teaching they will do as residents. In addition, faculty who want to become leaders and scholars in medical education can enroll in the one-year Medical Education Research, Innovation, Teaching and Scholarship (MERITS) fellowship, which Fromme also oversees.
Fromme has received numerous local and national teaching awards, including most recently the 2022 American Academy of Pediatrics Education Award. The award recognizes Fromme’s “educational contributions that have had a broad and positive impact on the health and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.”
H. Barrett Fromme, MD, MHPE, on her rounds
Her commitment to supporting medical education includes creating and co-leading the national Advancing Pediatric Educator eXcellence (APEX) teaching program, sponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Academic Pediatric Association. Fromme and several national colleagues designed the teaching program for pediatric hospitalists who want to improve their clinical teaching skills, and it has now been expanded to include general pediatricians and pediatric subspecialists. Physicians receive half-day in-person instruction on teaching skills twice annually, supplemented by online asynchronous learning modules over 12 months. In addition, they have a local mentor who observes and provides feedback on their teaching at their home institutions. “We’ve trained 150 to 200 pediatricians across the country on improving their teaching skills,” said Fromme.
Helping faculty become better teachers is one reason medical education has improved today. The other reason is that research has generated better teaching strategies. “The teaching methods I and others used 20 years ago are vastly different today,” said Fromme. “We have replaced the approach of teachers telling trainees what they need to know to one of a partnership that is different for every learner. We emphasize tailoring teaching to trainees’ understanding of a clinical topic and their prior experiences, which is learner-centered teaching.”
Medical trainees are expected to become “master adaptive learners,” constantly identifying and fixing gaps in their medical knowledge once they become attendings,” added Fromme. “And we expect our teachers to also be continually changing and improving how they teach.