Cast & Curious

Category: Learning and Development

  • The Art of Restart: How to recover from a devastating loss this pandemic

    This COVID-19 pandemic brought misery, loss to many. Some lost work, their source of income while others lost a loved one. Both are devastating and causes grief. While grief is a normal response to a lost, grieving is specially difficult this pandemic. When a love one dies for example, the isolation and social distancing prevents us from mourning with others. Mourning with others facilitates the process of grieving. Going through the usual routine process of grieving is difficult or disrupted and recovery from grief is made even more difficult and or prolonged.

    My grief stealthily started as a mountain of unfinished work and bad decisions. The constant fear of contracting COVID hovers as we battle on the frontlines. Stress and burnout mounted, albeit I was pretty sure I still can thrive. Then someone left and my mom died after a prolonged battle with diabetes. Grief slip into depression. I didn’t have any idea how I to unstuck myself from prolonged grief. Luckily, some people reached out and I am so grateful I survived and is now healing. Or at least I think I am.

    This is the topic of our #HealthXPh tweet chat this Saturday December 11, 2021 9PM Manila time.

    T1. What are the telltale signs of grief, burnout or depression during COVID-19 pandemic?

    On hindsight, the first step to recovery from grief and later, depression, is accepting the fact that you are grieving. I have several grieving episodes in my life before, but grief during pandemics was especially difficult. The presentation was different and was even “facilitated” by isolation and social distancing. Social communication of grief is also quite awkward and is more difficult than face to face communication. This I observed in not a few close friends colleagues who are grieving too. Thus being “aware” that you are grieving this pandemic is a bit difficult or different.

    T2. How would you navigate grief during this pandemic?

    After accepting I was grieving, I started to reach out for help. I talked to friends, mentors, family and people that I trust and care for. Social media communication was very helpful. An escape from a toxic environment also helped me clear out confusion.

    T3. What recovery tips can you offer to grieving persons?

    Accept it and ask for help. A differing, positive perspective or revelations really helped a lot for me. Self love is ok, but giving care is even more healing. It also helps to express grief to others who are undergoing through the same process of healing. I also started to go back to activities I loved and enjoyed before.

    After going through the process of grieving and healing, I realized grieving in this pandemic is almost always a constant. What makes it bearable is that it probably is be a a new normal grieving process for a longer time than expected. Then accepting it as it happens and how we cope with it might be really different from what we knew before.

    Image by Freepik

  • Digital Online Language: Effectively conveying what we feel, online.

    This pandemic changed the way human beings communicate or engage. Rules for communication changed almost overnight for most of us, some negatively. Others took it upon themselves to learn new ways of communicating online just so we continue building emotional trust while surviving this pandemic.

    Social distancing reduced face to face communication to minimum, it reminded me of the caveman’s grunts and yells in the prehistoric times. Worst, “body language” to augment social communication we learned over time, is now very difficult to employ. You cannot simply hug a grieving person, or pat a colleague for a job well done. The water cooler or coffee break conversations are gone. So is the locker room tete a tete . This created a communication vacuum which fueled the sudden rise of digital communications recently.

    True, digital communication somewhat reduced the void for human to human interactions. Connecting to people we love for example, is easier nowadays. But at the height of an emotional conversation, it is still very difficult to hug a video camera. Facial expressions and body language conveying emotional trust are less noticeable during digital communication. Yes there are emojis but using the right emojis is a challenge for most of us.

    There are also that confusing human responses in digital space that cannot be easily corrected or undone compared to say, a face to face conversation. Regrettable tweets or status updates for example will stay in the internet forever no matter how often you offer apologies to the bereaved individuals.

    Digital communication is even more important than ever with this pandemic. Effectively conveying what we feel online is even more important now that many of us are burnt by the prolonged physical distancing. This is the topic of our tweetchat:

    • T1. How is the pandemic affecting your ability to convey messages across a physical or digital space?
    • T2. Did you seek help on effective communication across digital space?
    • T3. What specific recommendations can you give on effective communication across digital space?

    Join us at 9PM Manila time on twitter at #HealthXPh and #HealthXspaces for our twitter spaces live discussion.

    ( Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay )

  • How Do We Measure Learning in the New Normal?

    There’s no denying learning changed a lot this COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of this pandemic has gone deep and wide into our everyday life. We never had “enough” time to contemplate a learning strategy and measurement for our personal, career and academic life. As one doctor academician said:

    “the struggle is real and frustrations borders depression! As if, I’m learning backwards!”

    Learning and learning measurement awareness were already limited to “formal” schools even pre pandemic. We rarely stopped for a moment and asked ourselves ” Am I learning from this experience?”, as if learning is something subconscious and automatic for us. We never bothered to check if we are indeed learning. It was never a habit or behavior in the first place!

    Pandemic changed all that and now there is an ongoing debate as to the best learning methods and measurement during pandemic. I asked these same questions at the start of this pandemic and got good responses from #HealthXPh chat. Understandably, we were in darkness that time, experimenting this or that in the hope we stumble at something concrete and effective while fighting COVID at the same time. One year into this pandemic, we have learned much about COVID-19 and have tried several learning strategies but have yet to get a clearer picture of ending this pandemic or the learning strategy that should works best for this new normal. Many hoped for a return to pre pandemic learning status quo simply because that’s what we’re good at. That is yet to be seen though. This is the topic of our upcoming tweetchat and twitter Spaces discussions this saturday May 15, 2021 at 9PM Manila time.

    T1. What personal learning methods have you used since the start of this pandemic?

    Self directed learning. While many of my pandemic education still relies heavily on the cadence of the formal academic institutions, most of my learning strategy now is really self directed. Many of the learning objectives I set during this pandemic stem from external inputs of formal academe, a lot of teaching learning activities I do are a hodgepodge of strategies from everywhere-personal, friends, parent, best friends, social media, books etc. Lately for example, I embarked on trying to learn how to weld metals and construct a simple flower base stand. Before you have to go to technical school for this so you dont get electrocuted. Now, after watching a youtube video or two, I went directly trying it out. without a mentor or a teacher. Social media also a played a big chunk of my education feed and source. Not because all that it produce are valid or accurate, but i have learned the hard way of discriminating which ones are fakes or validated accurate. Vaccine information for example couldn’t have reached me fast if not for social media.

    T2. How do you determine the best strategy that worked best for you?

    In academe we talk about models for measuring if the learner “learned’ something. Bloom’s taxonomy and Kirkpatrick Models are the more familiar ones. Personally I like the Kirkpatrick model for personal learning. The endpoint I’m usually looking for is the formation of new behaviors (3rd level) or best if i get actual results from these learning (4th level). A very common example here is handwashing and mask wearing. The simple learning objective here is to make handwashing and mask wearing a habit and the 4th level results should be prevention of COVID transmission.

    T3. What proved to be least/ most effective learning strategy?

    I am not saying I do not learn from webinars or online presentations, because I do. The learning I get in this mode is tiny in comparison to the volume of information bombarded to me in all online presentations. I still learned dancing from actually dancing than just watching someone dance on youtube. In other words, learn best applying, incorporating or having a “hands on” experience. In my case a surgeon, I learn more about new ways of mending bones by actually cutting and practicing on sawbones given the limited exposure to cases we have during this pandemic. On a personal level thus, I could learn better if vaccines works by actually taking one and not just listening or debating lengthily on social media if it works.

    Learning is always personal to me, be it in academe, career or personal life. The context and environment may change but the overall governing principles are the same. We continue to learn because we wanted to adapt, to exist, to survive and above all make an impact whatever the context we have.

    Join #HealthXPh and tweet Spaces discussion this May 15, 2021 at 9PM Manila time as we discuss how we learn in the new normal. These are our guide questions.

    • T1. What personal learning methods have you used since the start of this pandemic?
    • T2. How do you determine the best strategy that worked best for you?
    • T3. What proved to be least/ most effective learning strategy?

    Image by Md Azam from Pixabay

  • How health workers learn and take care of patients in the new normal.

    COVID 19 pandemic forever changed the way humans live. Healthcare it seems, has to bear the burden of fighting this pandemic (and all other enemies of health ) while continually learning about this little known enemy. These we have to do at the same time and at a speed unheard of in the past.

    An Unknown Enemy

    The hardest enemy to fight is the enemy you knew little or nothing at all. In medicine, our chances of neutralising a disease weighs heavily on knowing the disease and its behaviour. That is, if there is literature about that disease and if we have time digesting this literature. Unfortunately, this novel coronavirus caught us all unprepared and there is, but little time for most front liners to learn this disease. Our knowledge of this pandemic is rapidly increasing per science’s standard, but we are still a long way to go for a standardised prevention and treatment modality.

    Learn, We Must.

    COVID-19 is far from over and the we may be looking already at the new normal. Nonetheless, we must learn and treat patients at the same time or we’d be repeating mistakes made in the past. Fortunately, I see beacons of hope from stories frontline on how health workers continue to learn and treat patients in unique ways. There’s an outpouring of collaboration and sharing of ideas and a healthy dose of criticisms too. I have seen learning technologies taking front and center of this effort. Suddenly, alternative ways of learning went mainstream in a matter of months.

    Alternative ways of learning.

    As an educator, I am interested in how our health front liners continue learning amidst this pandemic. More importantly, I’m interested in making the process of learning more efficient, adaptive and more impactful to our current scenario. This way, we might be able to unburden our front liners and increase our chances of neutralising this enemy as well as the other diseases we’ve been fighting for years. This will be the topic of our discussion at #HealthXPh twitter chat August 1 9-10 PM Manila time.

    T1. How do you continue learning in the new normal?

    What changes- knowledge, skills or behaviour you had to acquire or change to do this? What was your top objective? What was your strategy or approach if any?What resources, technologies did you use? How do you balance your time learning and serving in the frontlines? What were your difficulties?

    T2.What are your metrics for measuring learning success?

    Metrics are a way of knowing we actually achieved the objectives we set earlier- that we learned something and that learning is what we aimed for in the beginning. For example, I usually set an objective of ” to learn diagnosing COVID-19 at the end of this 45 minute Zoom teleconference”. My key metric will be ” to get 75% of the correct answers on the post lecture online assessment related to diagnosing COVID-19″. Im usually dead tired after hospital work, so I use very specific metrics to have an impactful, realistic learning success.

    T3. How did this learning approach impacted your practice of healthcare?

    This pandemic already wreak havoc on everything we know existed, more so in healthcare. Guess were I learned about donning and doffing PPEs before actually attending a formal training on doing so? I also had to invest time, finances to alternative ways of learning. I also had to redo health processes inside the hospital and clinics to incorporate learning I got from these alternative pathways.

    Log in to your twitter account and don’t forget to join our discussion at #HealthXPh twitter chat August 1, 2020 9-10 PM Manila time. Append #HealthXPh to all your tweets around these three questions:

    • T1. How do you continue learning in the new normal?
    • T2. What are your metrics for measuring learning success?
    • T3. How did this learning approach impacted your practice of healthcare ?

    Change does not happen overnight in healthcare but this pandemic pushed us to disrupt healthcare in scale and speed un heard of in the past. This include learning how to learn.

    Image by Freepik

  • Are Healthcare Professionals Coachable?

    I’ve been an orthopaedic surgeon for decade and I thought I’ve done everything I can do to every orthopedic case in my area of practice. My mentors wasted no time training me to be a lifelong learner, provided me skills to handle most orthopedic cases and instilled professionalism and strict adherence to ethical values. These were tested of course and boosted my confidence to handle cases I have minimal exposure before, like wartime injuries. I thought performance was primarily measured by the physician surviving a challenging practice. Clearly, I am mistaken.

    It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts

    John Wooden

    The changing concepts and technology in medicine nowadays increases practice demands. Outcomes measure performance, leadership and business skills determine successful practice and government regulatory mandates are burgeoning by the day. In the field of practice, there’s no reliable way of determining your level of performance as a physician. Did my performance plateaued or dipped. Where or who would you go to? Academe? Previous mentors? Peers? For many physicians and surgeons out of the academe, this isn’t easy.

    Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence

    Vince Lombardi

    What is a coach?

    A coach is a a teacher, leader, motivator and critic with typically more experience than the learner . The coach may not be the most talented performers in their field but their intangible “wisdom” from tireless study of the field compensate for this. Ironically, most of the coaches gain their insights in the field from their “failure” in the field.

    Coach Vs. Mentor

    Although both mentors and coaches aim for the success of the mentee or coachee, the former is more of a role model and the coach, a critic. We have our mentors mostly in the academe, during med school or training and they usually remain there. The coach if ever we do actively search for one, are often found in practice.

    You don’t have enough talent to win on talent alone

    Herb Brooks ( US Team Hockey Coach that won over the much talented, physically intimidating Soviet Union team)

    Many of the successful people we admire (particularly those outside medicine) have coaches behind even at their peak performance. Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant have Phil Jackson, Manny Pacquiao (the boxer) have Freddie Roach. Even tech giants Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Erich Schmidt (Hello, Google) and Steve Jobs ( of Apple) have Bill Campbell coaching them. So why can’t physicians be coached?

    T1. What are the barriers to coaching healthcare professionals?

    If you are going to win games, you had better be ready to adapt

    Scotty Bowman

    Generally, the practice of medicine has this negative perception of coaching. In med school and training, one may easily find a mentor or role models to hone ones craft. In practice, many physicians are on their own and rarely connects with previous academic mentors. To many colleagues, being coached meant a “faltering confidence”, lack of skill and or even lack of independence. Patients who see their physician being coached may interpret this as a sign of incompetence. Consequently in practice, a physician rarely finds a physician coach and there is dearth of physician coaches.

    T2. Are there benefits/ risk to coaching healthcare professionals? Who benefits or who is at risks?

    A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has to see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be

    Tom Landry (NFL’s Dallas Cowboy’s winningest coach)

    The benefits of coaching in other fields is almost unquestionable. In medicine particularly in surgery, outcomes are tied to masterful performance of a given skill set or techniques. I tell residents the P2R2- Plan , Practice, Review, Repeat and they have their mentors to follow this through. In physicians practice, critiquing performance is left to peers who often, defaults to self critiquing. We all knew how self bias works.

    The bottom line of an improved performance is improving patient outcomes. Thus, while both the coach and coachee physician improve their performance, it’s the patient that ultimately reaps the benefits of a coaching relationship

    T3. What are the traits of a coachable healthcare professionals?

    Smart alecks are not coachable

    Bill Campbell, Trillion Dollar Coach, coach to Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg

    After med school and training, we physicians though we knew it all. I did. Until we notice that plateauing or worst, dipping practice performance. It takes humility and open mindedness to critique one’s own performance much more so, if the criticisms came from someone else. The flexibility to adapt to changing practice and patient’s needs are also necessary. In my case the active pursuit of a relatable coach that “clicks” with me is the hardest, especially in the competitive field of medicine and surgery. I’d like to change that, even at this stage of my career.

    Join #HealthXPh chat this Saturday Oct 19, 2019 at 9PM Manila time for an interesting discussion on healthcare professional coaching. The following are our chat guide questions:

    • T1. What are the barriers to coaching healthcare professionals?
    • T2. Are there benefits/ risk to coaching healthcare professionals? Who benefits or who is at risks?
    • T3. What are the traits of a coachable healthcare professionals?

    Don’t forget to append #HealthXPh in all your tweets during the chat. See you all!

    Image by David Mark from Pixabay

    References:

    • Dougherty, P & Joyce, B. (2018). The Orthopedic Educator: A Pocket Guide. 10.1007/978-3-319-62944-5.
    • Schmidt, E., Rosenberg, J., & Eagle, A. (2019). Trillion dollar coach: The leadership playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell.
    • Gawande A. Personal best: top athletes and singers have
      coaches—should you? 2011. .The New Yorker 2011 issue.
      http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/personal-best.
      Accessed 18October 2019