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Current Thoughts

Faculty Development: Year In Review!

Well well well, look who we have here. Good to see everyone out there doing their best! I feel very happy with the conclusions of the workshops this year that took place yesterday afternoon. The workshops were a great mix of successful experiences with feedback to make improvements for the next go round. Next will be 5 years of me doing the improv workshops for Faculty Development. That is pretty wild to think about, although the pandemic really messed up my sense of time. In other news, I have another improv show tonight. The team name is Biscuits and there will be several baking themed puns throughout the evening intermixed with a slacker style improv show in between talking about things being in the oven or fresh or delicious, etc. It is a really fun form. I missed last month because my children got me sick with a non-covid illness so it will be great to get back out there with this very fun group of improvisers.

Breakthroughs

Today’s thoughts are going to be thinking about the successes and challenges of the Faculty Development workshops this year. The audience that I think will benefit from this entry are people considering how to structure an applied improv curriculum. I have written how the structure of the workshops have developed over time. There are numerous lessons that I learned from that and I recommend exploring that if you are just starting your applied improv curriculum. This is about how this year went. Short answer is that it went really well. I think I learned more from these workshops than any in the past. Part of that, is that I incorporate interesting ideas from previous workshops on the same topic with different groups. I have also been better about thinking deeply about the most important lessons I draw from each topic. My understanding was not fully developed for some of the workshops at the beginning of the year. Some of the break throughs have been extremely meaningful. My approach to the Adaptability and Trust workshops had significant breakthroughs in terms of making the workshops useful. Making the workshops useful requires the participants to deeply feel they are practicing the microskills necessary to develop the greater skill that is the theme for the workshop. Adaptability’s breakthrough came when I understood that Empathy was saying Yes, and… to the people you are communicating with and Adaptability is saying Yes, and… to the situation you find yourself in. The workshop had previously been about the importance of developing your own life principles. The connection to improv seemed obvious to me, but I could tell the link was broken for many participants. Ensuring an easily understood connection from the activities done in the workshop to the challenges participants faced in their work and life had been the focus since the beginning of the workshops. Any understanding or idea that makes that connection more explicit is a breakthrough and will be important to develop those over the next year. 

Creating or consuming? Why not both!

Writing daily has helped me come up with several breakthroughs and deepen my understanding of the transition from the workshop activities to practice in everyday life. I’ve continued to read/listen to books this year, but much more of my time has been spent writing my thoughts and creating this year. Being aware of that balance has been an important step in my process. I think if I am taking too much new content in, it severely limits my ability to incorporate the contents’ lessons into my creative output. Similarly, if I have too many projects on the docket, I tend to use the resources available to me currently and it limits the amount of additional breakthroughs and deeper understanding available to me. At the beginning of 2022, I was consuming a number of books, but that was also when I didn’t have as many workshops planned. Since March, I have had multiple workshops and other creative outlets that my reading and input has slowed. I’ve been in more of a processing mode. In 2019, I consumed a book per week (using the senses of sight and hearing, not taste, to consume). That saw the biggest jump in the content in these Faculty Development workshops from year 1 to year 2. I have returned to many of those books over the years since then that have led to the breakthroughs, both fiction and nonfiction books. This year’s workshops saw me add some great resources to the book list that informs that workshops. The resource list was commented upon in several of the post workshop feedback forms.

What is the impact?

One of the challenges remains how to measure success. I mainly just used the same forms that I have used in previous years’ workshops. This form is collecting data and providing useful information, but it is not really getting at the aims of the workshops. I have written about the challenge of measuring the successes of these workshops a previous post. Believe it or not, nobody has solved that problem for me yet. I have had zoom meetings with people from other institutions and backgrounds that express similar challenges. The post workshop surveys clearly show that people enjoy the workshops and I have not poured over the data to draw other statistically significant conclusions. However, the data is pretty much always incomplete due to the nature of attendance at the workshops. I try to get participants to fill out a survey following the workshop (always filled out) and in one or two weeks after the workshop to determine how often the ideas came up in the participants everyday life (filled out occasionally). Even the surveys that are filled out, they are often hurried at the end of the workshop as people are hurrying to leave for the day (and I am hurrying them to leave to also leave for the day). A participant from this year’s workshop has offered to help create a better system for obtaining follow up data and survey information. The future is promising based on those discussions, but I need a breakthrough in that arena if anyone has one

No call, no show

The other challenge is consistent attendance. This year’s workshops sold out quickly with limited spots available because we were in the midst of the Delta wave when the marketing materials first went out this year. People were excited about the topics to be discussed. I was excited to have a room full of 20 people following best practices for mitigating the spread of the novel coronavirus. I emailed past participants to come facilitate these discussions based on those numbers. So 20 people signed up for all 8 of the workshops but we only had between 5-12 participants at each workshop. I emailed everyone in the days before the workshop. Life gets busy and I know that our workshops are not the most important activity in the lives of healthcare workers in a pandemic but it can be frustrating. This happened the previous years’ workshops as well and in talking with the head of Faculty Development, it is an issue at all Faculty Development activities around the country. She could have just been saying that to make me feel better though. So that is the other continued problem to be solved as I look to improve the workshops for next year. The participants this year did a great job discussing the ideas and making connections to their everyday life but the more people (up to a certain limit), the more perspectives there are to the benefit of the whole group.

In conclusion… 

Overall, the workshops were a huge success. The positives will help make the workshops grow and improve the experience for future workshops. The challenges will get better as the workshops grow (feel free to help by setting some workshops up!). The music videos are just songs that I have been enjoyed this year and helped me think about the problems and solutions that will bring more improv experiences to healthcare education for the benefit of the patients and the people working to help the patients!