Cultivating leaders

I am excited to see the kickoff this week of our annual “Meet Your Interns” series. Every week for the next couple months or so, our newest class of trainees will tell us a little about themselves. You can see last year’s full set of intros from our now-second-year residents here. In all the commotion right after July 1, everyone is swimming in new year energy and information. And although that is certainly a great time for introductions, what this series does, by delaying its start into August, is give our interns a chance to reflect a bit on what they have come to appreciate about our program and Iowa City. Have their expectations been met, what has surprised them so far? You start to see some common threads emerge as confirmation of what we do well. New arrivals appreciate the culture of the town and how easy it is to navigate. Interns also regularly cite the challenges of training being offset by the support they feel from faculty and staff. This is Iowa in a nutshell. Whatever might seem impossible to overcome becomes manageable because of the colleagues who are ready to lend a hand and who always have your back.

What’s also interesting is that our residency program has been running this series long enough that we can look back and see not just what last year’s interns said, but what our current Chief Residents said when they were interns. Here in the same week, for example, we can see Drs. Cameron Brownlee and Amanda Chang praising the variety of outdoor activities in Iowa City as well as, of course, how amazing Dr. Manish Suneja is!

I have said before how much I enjoy working with the Chief Residents. And it’s thrilling to think about how far they have come in such a short period of time, from medical school grads to interns to critical members of our residency program’s leadership team. They serve as a bridge between our excellent faculty attendings and the current residents, with fresh memories of the challenges of balancing front-line patient care while delivering education themselves and conducting research and quality improvement projects. In addition to that ambassador role, the Chiefs are also setting an example for the next class of Chiefs, which gets decided a year in advance. Since April, these five R3s have known that in June 2027, they will step into that same role and can start preparing.

Photo for reflection
I asked these Chiefs how the last few months have been going and in addition to an increased daily step count (“doubled or tripled,” Dr. Brownlee said!), they described one of their innovations added this year, a sort of open-door office hours, they are calling “Chief Chats.” I’ll let them describe, with my thanks for taking the time:

The chief role has been a whirlwind of learning that has been both fun and challenging and has already been shaping us to be better leaders. As chiefs, we felt it was our responsibility to support the growth and wellbeing of our residents, the most vulnerable of which are the intern class. The chief chats were instituted with the goal of breaking down the barrier between residents and the chiefs with the hope that they feel more comfortable approaching us throughout the year. They have thus far exceeded our expectations and have been allowing us to learn more about who the residents are as people first, understand their career aspirations, identify any concerns or barriers they may be facing with their unique transitions into “physicianhood,” and provide a safe space for open communication. We hope to expand this to the upper levels as well to continue the connectiveness of our residency.

Upi’s “Oh, WOW” moment
The Chiefs are only one example of successful leadership development, something I think Iowa and especially our department excels at. In our Pulmonary division, three recent stories all contain an element of mentoring with an eye toward building future leaders. The recently completed ultrasound symposium, which brought more than 100 fellows from all over the Midwest for a two-day course in point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS), is now under the leadership of Drs. Sydney Bowmaster and Charles Rappaport, both of whom were instrumental in building the POCUS curriculum for our residents. (Both of them are former Chief Residents, by the way!) Research within the division has always also been a story of building future leaders, and the most recent example of that is a fellowship research award from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation for Dr. Michael Schlossman, who will be mentored by Dr. Daniel Cook. Finally, this recent R01 to Drs. Alicia Gerke and Alejandro Pezzulo should be seen as a success in leadership cultivation. Both of them are graduates of our residency program as well as our pulmonary fellowship, which Dr. Gerke now directs. Congratulations to all of them and to their faculty mentors, who invested the time, day after day, to make sure their good work would continue on into the future.