August 2007 | Back to Table of Contents

Pulse

Book Learning

A book group offers medical educators a painless way to do professional development—by talking books and shop.

When Felix Ankel, M.D., director of the emergency medicine residency at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, meets with residents for their six-month evaluations, he gives each one a book.

All are books that have made an impression on him, and usually they’re ones he’s discussed at meetings of Best Read Med Ed, a book club that Ankel joined in 2003.

Created in 2002, Best Read Med Ed is a joint CME activity of the HealthPartners Institute for Medical Education and the University of Minnesota. It brings together anywhere from eight to 15 medical educators about five times a year, who, before they go off to their clinics for the day, meet for bagels, coffee, and conversation. The books kick-start the discussions about such issues as teaching, the definition of quality medical care, and ethics.

“It’s so difficult to find time to step back from medical practice and administration and teaching and just do some reading and thinking around teaching and practice that’s not directed at a specific patient or a specific topic,” says Carl Patow, M.D., executive director of the institute. Patow founded the book club and served as its original moderator.

He says the group has discussed approximately 30 books—from the straightforward (Curriculum Development for Medical Education) to the macabre (The Bedford Murder, which is described as an “evidence-based clinical mystery”).

The most recent read was Redefining Health Care by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter. In June, eight physicians came together to consider how medical education would have to change if physicians were to be prepared to work in the kind of system Porter advocates, which prescribes competition based on improving value and quality rather than reducing costs.

The Hidden Agenda
One of the criteria for selecting books, according to Patow, is that they encourage participants to take a broader view of professionalism. One choice, Time to Heal, for example, focuses on the history of medical education in the United States and how medicine has grown as a profession. Another, Teaching with Fire, discusses what it means to be a physician-teacher.

The group also read the Institute of Medicine’s Health Professions Education—A Bridge to Quality. “That in and of itself is a treatise on professionalism,” Patow says. “When we read something like that about the quality of patient care or safety, it not only elevates the group’s understanding of professionalism but it allows members to take that information back to the clinic and classroom and really be able to insert it into their training of medical students or residents.”

Ankel says some of the readings have altered the way he relates to his colleagues. One book that made a lasting impression was The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change, which talks about the need for organizations to focus on their assets rather than their deficits. “This book allowed me to view others as gifts to be cherished rather than resources to be managed,” he says.

Best Read Med Ed does more than get educators thinking about the way they practice and teach future physicians. It builds community, which can be difficult to do in the halls of the hospital or clinic. Ankel says, “There’s a certain intimacy in really hearing other people’s underlying assumptions about health care, about education, about management.”—Kim Kiser