[MUSIC] I felt that the students who struggled, struggled not because of lack of knowledge, but more because of lack of self awareness. And the first step, as usual, would be me going to the people higher up and ask them if there was a way I could find some time in the curriculum where I could teach this. The initial response was, maybe you need more clinical work, you've got too much free time on your hands. So obviously it was a set back, but as you know, I'm pretty hard headed. If I'm passionate about something, I don't stop and I didn't. So I thought that I could at least use the time that I had with the students to kind of test out this idea or theory of mine, and ask the Associate Clockship Director for medical students. There is curricula time for third and fourth years that I have at my disposal where usually that was spent with didactic teaching. But I think I learned in my years as an educator, decades as an educator, that it's not what you see or teach, it's what the students takes away from the session is what real teaching is all about. So having that student initiated learning is really the core of teaching. And most of the time, when I find that it's been a productive session is when I come out of the session really feeling that I learned something and I see that my students are empowered. Maybe not with the matter or the stuff that I taught them, but to get them really enthusiastic about it and wanting to learn about it themselves. Most of the classrooms in the medical school are typical classroom with rows of seats there. So we actually get a workout before the session because we take out all the chairs put it in a round seating so that everybody can see everyone and we made the environment more playful. We do use flip charts, we use colored markers, and it's just such a fun environment. I wish I could do that for all my classes. And actually I have adapted that even in my say interpreting chest x-ray or teaching them about shock, horror, fluid and electrolytes. I now tend to do in groups so that it helps so that it's not an individual that's being picked at so the pressure is less. It's more of a learning environment and they learn to collaborate and work in groups because medicine is definitely a team sport. You asked me about the mindset, and I don't know if I'm answering the question right or not, but I'll give you an example from my personal life where, I have two kids and when my son was growing up, I would just see the positive in him and I would be encouraging all the time. And my husband on the other hand was very critical. So the same results or the same activity he would do, and I would be all ga-ga over it, and my husband, on the other hand, would notice things that he didn't do. And this used to be always an experiment because he felt I was being too lenient and I felt he was being too strict. So, well my son ended up being pretty good. And I didn't know whether it was my appreciativeness or was it my husband's critique that ended up turning him into the person he is. So we decided, when our daughter was born, who is 14 years younger, to try and use the appreciative inquiry, or the appreciative mindset, to nurture her. And my husband agreed. And I'm proud to say that she's really grown up into a wonderful kid. So I've wanted, because we are taught in the medical field, to be problem solvers. So we approach everything as a problem, and it's really nice to be able to change that mindset and go from the solution aspect of it. And that was one thing that I felt was the major change in my mindset where, and I think it, in a way, was also in my patient interactions. Because it allowed me to see my patient as a person more than as a disease entity because we were starting with solutions in the interaction. Instead of lambasting my patient about the obesity part of it, I would ask them about what was some fun activity that they did, what were some of the things that they could do. And that's something that really opened my eyes and made me have fun during my patient encounters because my patients taught me so much. And I think that is one thing that I tried to make my students understand that the disease part of it. Disease can be understood in scientific terms, but illness is a human event, and to see that person behind the illness is really what is important. Because we may not be able to cure people, but we can at least make them feel better. And I think that appreciative mindset has percolated a lot of the way I even practice medicine, and I feel it's what I try to inculcate in my students. Because now it's not if a student has a problem that I email them or call them, but I try to send these intimate emails or face-to-face calls asking them what went well or what was good about this encounter. And I think slowly but surely It could lead to a cultural change. I keep saying that you know, there are times after the session where the students come up, and I may be, you make me feel that I can change the world. But when I walk into the clinic and I see disgruntled physicians or disgruntled nursing staff, that brings me down. And I always say you have to be the change that you want to see in the world. You may not be able to change the world, but you can change how you respond to it. And that's something which I feel is what really has been my driving force. And I hope that I can get like minded people together, and ultimately make that culture change that I've been striving to do. [MUSIC]
