Alice Fornari, EdD, is Associate Dean of Educational Skills Development at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine and Assistant Vice President of Faculty Development. Prior to joining Hofstra/North Shore-LIJ, Dr. Fornari was Assistant Director of Medical Education and Co-Chair of the Division of Education at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Fornari has funded scholarship which focuses on educational development and practice. We are fortunate to have Dr. Fornari's perspective in this month's BOC post.
I always consider myself an educator. Yes, my passion is
learning. Even in my prior career as a nutrition educator, I worked with students
and professionals to effectively improve their teaching and learning. This is
core to my current role at Hofstra-North Shore LIJ School of Medicine.
People ask me; “what do you do in your role?”
I say, “I teach people how to teach.”
Teaching is my passion. In my role as a medical educator in
a large 18-hospital academic health system, I cover a wide spectrum of medical
education: UGME, GME and CME. My goal is to ignite teaching as a passion for
others in the medical education environment. I do my best to take “one-on-one”
faculty development sessions and create “communities of practice” among
like-minded people to work together to collaborate on ideas. My hope for
program participants is for them to leave with new knowledge and skills that they
can use and share with others.
One way to engage faculty in teaching and learning is to
help them realize that one of the four paradigms of Boyer’s definition of scholarship
is teaching and learning.
Exposing faculty to this concept allows them to use their everyday
work as a medical educator as a bucket-filler
for professional advancement and recognition.
When I partner with a clinician educator, I take some aspect of their clinical
educator role and convert it to a research question, apply descriptive
methodology, outcomes, and describe its application to educational practice. Yes,
a research project!
So this partnership has a purpose for both the clinician educator
and myself as a senior medical educator. We both build vitae based on
educational research that crosses curriculum development, teaching, learning
outcomes, and professional identify formation. Making these creative ideas public allows for
feedback from other like-minded professionals and for cross-fertilization of
ideas across institutions.
This collaborative approach to education research has
supported my success as a non-MD in a MD world. I learned early in my career as
a medical educator that partnering with physicians and nurses not only leads to
scholarship and peer reviewed
publications but has led to my successful promotion from assistant professor to
associate professor and most recently full professor over an eleven year
period.
Lastly, it is important to note that all of my educational
scholarship is completed after hours, i.e. not in the workday. Achieving publication and promotion is an out
of workday activity. Once this reality
is no longer a barrier, you will reap rewards,
career promotion, and satisfaction.
