Welcome to the AANS series, Jumpstarting Your Academic Career. My name is Yuheng Kuo, and I am an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery at the UCSF Fresno Branch Campus. In this session, we will be discussing preparing to teach. I have no disclosures pertinent to this discussion. Teaching is a fundamental part of being an academic neurosurgeon. By choosing this career pathway, you have assumed the responsibility of teaching not only the next generation of neurosurgeons, but others within the medical community. As you advance as an academic neurosurgeon, your promotions will be dependent on your reviews of your teaching abilities. This can include reviews by medical students, residents, and fellows you have taught over your time. You can also achieve teaching certificates to show a dedication to teaching which will be taken into consideration. Independent of your promotion of your career, however, many of us have chosen this pathway because we achieve a personal job satisfaction from instruction of others. As a resident, you will already play a role in instructing medical students. As your career advances, you will assume a greater and greater role in teaching. As an attending, you will teach not only residents, but also other members of the hospital staff. As you advance in your professorship, you will then have junior faculty members who will require your mentorship to develop as an academic neurosurgeon. Teaching skills are not something that a great emphasis is placed on in residency programs as a whole. Efficient teaching involves certain skill sets as delineated on this slide. They can include setting goals and expectations of your students. As a resident, you already experience this as your program director in your annual reviews discusses your core competencies and how you have achieved them. They will set milestones for the upcoming year that you can achieve. Creating a good learning environment can encourage the learning of others. Clinical teaching is also different from didactic teaching and requires a different skill set. How to provide feedback to your students is critical for them to understand where they have achieved and where they have room for improvement. Finally, it is important to manage burnout as well as promote well-being in not only your students, but in yourself as an instructor. How does one learn these teaching skills? There are three primary pathways towards this mentorship, local resources that are available at your institution, as well as national resources towards teaching. Ralph Waldo Emerson stated, our chief want in life is someone who will make us do what we want. There are a variety of different attendings that play a role in instructing you as a resident. Primary amongst these are your department chair and your program director. In the greater medical school community, there are associate deans of undergraduate medical education, which represent the medical students, as well as associate deans of graduate medical education, which represent yourself as a resident or fellow. The chief of the medical staff, as well as senior hospital administrators, can also play a role in educating you as a resident. There are undoubtedly individuals who are better at this teaching than others. As a resident, you have observed individuals from whom you have learned a lot and others for whom the teaching efficacy has been more limited. Those individuals who have inspired you to learn and have shown great efficacy in teaching you your skill sets are individuals that you can look up to to learn teaching skills. Not only can you do this by observation, but sitting down with these individuals to learn from their experience and ask them directly how they view teaching can prove beneficial to developing your skills. Undoubtedly, we are all an amalgam of a variety of different individuals who have taught us. Ideally, you will have taken the best of each individual that fits your personality and skill set and synthesize them to maximize your efficiencies. Your local institution may have formal didactic courses to teach you teaching skills. I have presented below a variety of programs available here at UCSF. For residents, UCSF has a teaching skills workshop. As one advances in one's career, there are a variety of different workshops, teaching scholars programs, as well as teaching certificates that you can participate in. These vary in length and duration and focus on different parts of teaching skill sets. Nationally, the American College of Surgeons, as well as the American Medical Association, do provide some resources for teaching as well. Unfortunately, similar courses do not appear to be available by our major neurosurgical societies at this juncture. So what opportunities may you have to teach at this time as a resident? Within your institution, the hospital will provide the opportunity to present at Grand Rounds, conferences in your department or other departments, as well as nursing education sessions. All these provide you an opportunity to hone your skills as an instructor. Within your department, there are resident didactic courses and conferences, both formal and informal, as well as morbidity and mortality conferences at which you may have the opportunity to present. Finally, within the medical school itself, there may be opportunities to teach medical schools as well as the informal teaching you do on rounds or during direct patient care on a day-to-day basis. All these present opportunities for you to hone your teaching skills. As you look to advance your career and apply for jobs in academic neurosurgery, you should give yourself credit for the work you have done to advance yourself as an instructor. On your CV, there are many opportunities to note the work that you have done. There can be a separate section created on your CV to list these. All coursework that you have taken as well as certificates that you have achieved can be listed in this section. Similarly, CME courses or credits that you have achieved can be noted in this section of your CV. Any invited presentations that you have been to at the department, hospital, regional or national level should be placed on your CV in a separate section noted as invited presentations. Teaching awards that you have achieved should also be listed. Finally, you can list a section with individuals that you have mentored or directly instructed and what role you played in their career development. Thank you for listening to this session and I wish you the best of luck in your career as an academic neurosurgeon.

Yuheng Kuo

Associate Professor

Neurosurgery

Teaching

Academic career